


The Colors of Dawn

by 1derspark



Series: celestial colors [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (kind of), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Parenting, Earth!Andy, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Magic, Moon!Nicky, Mutual Pining, Nature, Ocean!Quynh, Slow Burn, Sun!Joe, Violence but it’s pretty in line with movie violence, family trauma, you gotta read the rest to find out about everyone else ;)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:21:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 52,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29367690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1derspark/pseuds/1derspark
Summary: “I think there are things we don’t know about each other, that are dangerous,” Nicky said. “This isn’t done.” He gestured to the distance between them, how they’d managed to keep speaking in some kind of peace.Joe walked further into the field of flowers. When his hands brushed the petals they curled into him as worshipers would, kissing at his skin for warmth, for light and the greed of the sun’s brilliance. The dew hissed away into the air. Then they were only a length apart.“I think it’s about time we reevaluate what’s done,” Joe declared. He held out his palm, skin a lovely brown, and Nicky swore he could see the blood in his veins, leaking gold.“How about we do what we want?”Oh what sweet seduction, what dashing defiance.He took Joe’s hand, and the sky above them burst into color.(Or the Sun and Moon AU)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: celestial colors [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2212356
Comments: 69
Kudos: 174
Collections: The Old Guard Big Bang





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a thing I did.
> 
> I took the Sun and Moon schtick the fandom has, put it in a blender, added some magic glitter, family trauma, and thus this 50k monster that consumed four months of my life was born. I have never written anything of this length, and though it tested me like no other it did strengthen my writing I think. So cheers to that!
> 
> There are no two people in the world I could thank more than Kellin and Selena for this. Kellin my lovely wizard word warrior, is the entire reason why this piece is coherent enough to read. There is no beta that could ever match you my dear, I owe you my heart. And Selena who stepped in to create some absolutely KICKASS art for this fic, who listened to all my worded ramblings and made a masterpiece out of it, darling you are the best.
> 
> Thanks to the mods for hosting this Bang! And also I would very much recommend listening to [this playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6uz3AqzJoQAks8JD6HbMba?si=fZo4OnTaQxOECt-VVk0sGA&nd=1) that Kellin put together for the fic, as if I didn't love her enough already <3
> 
> Enjoy everyone :)

Out of all the gods of the world there were two who bore natural sons.

Rather than a birth out of Sea or Sky or Earth these boys come from flesh. They came from anger and a longing for family; too long had their mothers been alone.

Therefore, they are different.

Golden and sweat glistening on her brow, hair tied back in a riot of black curls, the Sun gave birth as women did. She threw her head back with a scream on the bed, bearing down for the midwife between her legs who pulled out her son after a six hour labor.

Sat behind the Sun, brushing a cool towel across her forehead, was a woman who smelled of soil. The scent that rises from the ground after a rainstorm. Wild grass and the echoing of cliff walls. The snap-crunch of rotting wood. Toadstools in a hollowed tree. 

It was this woman who held the child first, and looked upon him with an air of awe and sadness. She handed the boy, wailing, onto the bared chest of his mother and watched them both intently from where she sat at the bedside, counting the sparks of gold reflecting in their eyes. 

“My Yusuf,” the Sun said to the boy, the room, no one in particular. She was transfixed by the baby who had her thumb clutched in his tiny fist, hiccuping through his bleating cries.

“Look at him, Andromache,” she said, holding her son up for the woman to see. “He’s so strong already.”

“He is your son, al-Kaysani,” Andromache said. “He would be nothing less.”

“He has to be,” the Sun said, something wary in her tone. Protective and world-ending as only motherhood may be. Pray to those, who pain the son of a god. 

“Do you think that they know about him?” she asked while she rocked Yusuf, hushing him as he cried.

Andromache would not be surprised if the mortals knew of this child. The skies above them were radiant with light, a brighter and hotter sun than ever before. Perhaps the fields had caught fire. Later on, when the temples were checked, there would be offerings. Many of them, blessings for a newborn god.

But this was not to whom the Sun referred. 

Andromache sighed. “Of course they know.” She cast the Sun a hard, testing look. “As you will know when di Genova births her own heir.”

The Sun huffed, and Yusuf cried out at the movement. She cooed at him, lulling him back into comfort. He was curious, this one. His eyes could not seem to land on one place, and stay there.

A troublemaker.

Andromache sighed and stood, shuffling to the balcony, past the nursemaids who were cleaning up at the end of the bed.

The palace was carved into the desert mountain, high above the lowlands. Andromache could see the wide expanse of yellow-orange terrain. The Moon and her charge were very far from here, the land of sun and sand.

“We can hide nothing from each other, even with the distance between us all,” Andromache said as she studied the sky where the sun pulsed and brightened. The day was hot and stinging to the skin. There were crops of fresh flowers dotting the cliff crevices in bunches. No doubt, al-Kaysani had summoned them in birth. 

“Quynh has made her place, and so have I. Mine is with you,” Andromache said. 

“For now,” came from the bed.

Yes. “For now.”

~

Farther away, beyond the desert, and the grasslands of Andromache’s domain, teeming with horse herds and rolling hills and mountains, came the forest border between them all. 

A single meadow separated this land, that in the spring bursted into a riot of wildflowers. Teeming with color, with insects on painted wings, fluttering, inquisitive. In the daytime it glowed golden. In the night it shone like a gemstone. 

(But this place was for later.)

The woodlands surrounding this meadow were teeming with star-guards, minor gods made servants, whom their master referred to as the Stella, patrolling the dark and gloom covered wood with commanded fervor. And beyond this wood, past miles and miles of trenches and guarded posts, was a palace in which the other newborn celestial son slept peacefully in his bassinet.

His mother watched him from the bedside, propped up by a mountain of pillows. Her skin was naturally pale, and her hair was long and luxuriously brown, tied in a long braid down her back. Her eyes travelled over the sleeping form of her son, like ice on a frozen lake, calculating.

The strain of her two day labor was evident on her face, and when her son came out of the womb he had been quiet. She’d been too weak to hold him in the moments after he was born. She did not move to hold him now.

Instead, two women hovered over his cradle. One was dressed in the servants uniform of the house. Black and silver with her hair hidden beneath a cap, with a few blonde silvery strands peaking out. Her face was tinted a matte shade of blue. She rattled a toy in the shape of a star in front of the child’s face.

“Cometa,” the Moon demanded from bed, “enough. My head is pounding, and you’d do well to keep Nicolo sleeping.”

Cometa stopped the shaking and put the toy away with a nod, but she lingered by the boy’s side.

“He has slept for a long time,” the other woman said. She was dressed in a warrior’s garb. Her armor was slim and sleek, made of a hardened, slippery substance. Her hair flowed freely down her back in a black, luminous wave. When she spoke the roar of the ocean hummed beneath her voice. She smelled of salt.

“Soon he will wake, hungry,” Cometa commented.

“That is what a wet-nurse is for,” the Moon said, waving them off. “When he can walk we will train him.”

“We?” said the water-woman.

“Yes, Quynh. We,” said di Genova. Cometa gave a barely noticeable shiver at the tone of her mistress. Quynh only turned and met her face on.

“I suppose we have all made our choices haven’t we,” Quynh drawled. She held the Moon’s gaze for quite a long while, a challenge or an evaluation, maybe both, before turning back to the boy. She rubbed a finger along Nicolo’s cheek.

“I will train him. He will be strong,” she said.

“He is my son,” the Moon commented, sounding bored. “Of course he will be.”

Quynh dared not respond. She kept watch over her charge, while Cometa conversed quietly with the Moon who had fallen back into her pained stupor. The labor had been long, and arduous. Quynh knew it would have killed a mortal woman. And she knew it would not have killed a goddess. She had hoped nonetheless.

Strong, she thought looking at Nicolo. No, you will be _stronger._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come check me out on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/1derspark)!
> 
> And as always comments and kudos are appreciated and feed the beast :)


	2. Part 1

When Nicky was young, he spent all of his days riding the light between stars.

In those days he had energy in abundance, overflowing, uncontained. When he was not immersed in his courses of study and sword training, he followed his mother through the woodlands. The Stella who guarded it, dropped to their knees as they strode by, and would not meet his eyes. He did not know why, but he was bothered by it. He gave them no attention in return, and instead called the owls, the does, the delicate and wild animals who lived under nightfall, to his side instead.

He felt unbridled; a young colt, forty minutes from birth, and already he could stand on all his legs, ready to jump and gallop. Strong, yet unaware of the creatures he trampled beneath his feet. 

This, he learned later, is what it meant to be born as something the humans would call a god.

Rarely his mother would take him to the moon temples.Though they had been built for her. For  him. Within the humans worshipped with a fervor he did not understand. Often the alters would be laden with gifts, sacrifices, in exchange for the Moon's favor, though she rarely gave it. Regardless, they were in awe of her.

Nicky was too. 

While he ran in the shadow of her footsteps, tripping over roots, crushing night flowers beneath his feet without notice, only to later weep over the ripped petals, she seemed to glide over the ground.

When she walked it was with the surefire purpose of someone who has done it ten thousand times, who has crushed ten thousand things, and after her failures she knew where to step, and where to stomp.

The night was dark and terrible. It was also full of light. The Moon exuded both.

“Nicolo, come,” his mother would call from the open fields, where she stood cloaked in shadow. 

He followed her, his skin rippling in luminescence, though he was covered in black mud, clumsy as he was those days.

Where he was wild and bright she was midnighted and elegant. Dark hair, and skin like the wing of a dove, like freshly fallen snow. When incensed in emotion she rippled in shades of black and blue. Her eyes were the only bright points on her face, glowing green-hued beacons to follow. 

She did not look human, nor should she. She was not mortal. Nicky could still pass as one, should he learn to dim his own light. But as he aged, his godhood would grow into true physical manifestations, carving an undeniable distance between him and the mortals who worshipped him below.

For now, he was fleshy, and imperfect. Thus was the price of a god-born child.

“Do you know what family is, Nicolo?” the Moon asked him when he came close, plucking a twig out of his hair and flicking it into the grass.

He didn’t really. The frenzied units of men, fucking and laughing and dying in their little houses, was one kind of definition. There were a few outcroppings of townships outside of their forest, where the temples were located. They’d dare not build on this land, even the mortals, ignorant as they may be, knew not to tread in the footsteps of a god. They were instinctual creatures, running on bated time. Worth little more than that.

(But then he thought of the bands of teenagers he’d see in the villages, arms thrown around each other’s shoulders, blasted to the heavens on honey-wine, falling asleep on the high hills, exuding something sweeter than magic. He watched them sometimes from the shadows, trying not to glow.)

He settled for a middle ground. “The stars,” he said. 

The Stella. gods, but less so. Their skin twinkled in light shades of fire. Red and yellow and blue. Cometa too, could be counted among them, but she was something different. She smelled of ice and the burning of ozone and something melting. 

“Family is what you make it,” he said.

His mother frowned, but when she looked at him she wasn’t angry. Curious, more as to why he didn’t filter himself, irritated enough to shoo away the fireflies and moths who’d come to hover about them that he had called in a show of unconscious uncertainty. 

“Family,” she said, raising her arms to the sky, “is what you are made of.” With a flick of her hands the moon above them became clouded, and the meadow fell into a sheen of covered gray. Nicky gasped, frightened, and instinctively brightened his skin. Good thing he could glow. 

“You are made of me, Nicolo,” she paused, watching his reaction, tracking the few frantic buzzing bugs flitting around him in fear, the lone light for miles. 

Her hand snapped out in a blur, and in between her fingers, pressed between the curvature of her nail, was a struggling, squirming firefly.

“Do not forget,” she said and crushed it.

~

Their palace was inland, but not far from the ocean. 

It was only a day’s ride or so until Nicky could see the beach, feel the sand, the salty tang of the air, the riotous movement of the waves, like muscles rippling on the back of a panther. Nicky’s power felt old, cemented, otherworldly. But the Ocean’s was different. Standing with his feet dug into the sand on the shore, there was a frothing anticipation in his mouth and bones. The call of the sea was not kind, it was violent. 

When the men prayed to her it was always with an undercurrent of fear, the Ocean was unpredictable, the goddess even more so. Her offerings were overdone, her altars laden with fish and squid and barrels of fermented seaweed. Much of it rotted there. 

Nicky thought it strange that Quynh could inspire such fear, even after seeing what she was capable of. 

Quynh came to the palace often. As wary as Nicky was of her power, her magic, it complimented his mother’s in a way that settled under his skin, comforting. Sun and Earth, Moon and Ocean. Universal pairings.

Quynh and his mother would spend nights together on the beaches when the storms grew monstrous, pushing and pulling the tides together. Anchored back to back on the beach they would raise their hands to the sea and sky and weave the waves back into submission, thunder and lighting a conduit. 

Nicky watched them, raging, shivering and soaked underneath the shadow of his horse. 

He wondered if he would ever have such power. 

(A small, hidden part of himself did not want his mother's power. For he saw the price, the pain. Too often at the end of the storms would Quynh be broken and bloody, while his mother stood tall, unmoved. 

She never stayed to help, leading him away while Quynh staggered to her feet to then slip beneath the waves. Though they were gods, surviving what a human could not, the healing was not always clean; the bruises would linger for days.)

Eventually, though he did not know why, his mother let him ride to the beaches without her, guided by an escort, to be taught by Quynh. 

“You are too stiff, Nicolo,” Quynh chided as they stood at the lip of the inlet where the water curved into a soft cove. 

At night the algae shone beneath the surface of the tide pools, glowing a soft blue-green. Stingrays and shark pups darted about in the waters, picking up the crabs or shrimp or octopus who’d dare to leave the safety of the rocks.

It was both wild and harmonious. The perfect place to practice for beginners.

Quynh came to where he stood on the edge of the rocks, and put her hands on his shoulders, orienting him sideways. She pulled on his arms, so they were raised outwards, away from his core and aimed at the whole of the water.

She mimicked his stance, slipping into it easily, and rolled her wrists at the water, where the waves surged.

The tide rolled in, bubbling. Some fish surged towards it, eager, their funnel out towards the greater sea. Others darted back into hiding, not strong enough to brave the current. 

But Quynh was gentle, this wave was a slow, controlled movement. The coral and the coves, the hidden hideaways for fish, were left only ruffled, not disturbed. As more water surged in, too came its fiercer creatures, more sharks, and other toothy, snapping things.

They came and cleaned the seabed dry of meat and droppings. Then Quynh flexed her hands again and the tide rushed out, the predators with it. 

“See,” Quynh said to him, gesturing out to the deep water where she’d sent the waves back. “It’s more of a dance than a battle. You shouldn’t fight the tide, but funnel it.”

Nicky frowned and moved his hands in the motion Quynh demonstrated, but with much less grace. The tide rumbled, gurgling, then sighed, dropping back into its natural rhythm. Nicky’s command was forgotten, or more likely ignored.

“It won’t listen to me,” Nicky grumbled, crossing his arms and sticking his nose up in the air with all the indignance of someone young and untrained and unwilling to try.

Quynh laughed. “It will take time, young Nicolo,” she said. “This is more my domain than yours. But having you with me will help.”

She crouched down so they were eye to eye and put her hands on his shoulders.

“One day you will be a god of gods. More powerful than you know. Enjoy your freedom now, when your biggest problem is moving water into a cove.”

She looked troubled by what she said. Her eyes, dark as the seas she commanded, were wet in the moonlight. Instinctively he dimmed himself, and the night around them got a little darker, to spare her the embarrassment. 

“Will you help me, Quynh?” he asked her. He thought of his mother, how she commanded the Stella better than men ever did their soldiers. There was an inherent dominance in everything she did, no one asked a second time what she meant. Nicky did not think he could ever command so well.

“I will help you whenever I can,” she promised. “And there will be others too to guide you.”

“Others?” Nicky had never met another god besides her. There was Quynh and there was his mother. The Stella, who lingered in between or Cometa whose power came only with the sporadic trails of light Nicky saw occasionally in the night sky. They did not count. The humans he barely spared a glance to, they’d worship a fern if it curled in the breeze for them.

Quynh stood up, and fixed her eye above to the cliffs beyond the cove where his Stella guard waited, observant, looming.

“There are many more,” she said. “One day, I’m sure you’ll meet them.”

~

He met his third god in the daytime.

As a teenager, his mother trusted him less and worked him more. He no longer had the excuse of being young for his failings.

He’d grown long and lanky, his head too big for his body, his nose too big for his face. But no longer did his light flicker often in the night, now more easily contained. He  _ shone  _ without stopping, and his sword strokes were just as impressive. He wielded a two-handed blade with power and grace, frequently upgrading to larger swords as he grew. Each blade expertly made by their kind and accommodating blacksmith.

His mother would wake him just as the sun sank beyond the horizon, the sky a wash of purples and blues, the fresh bruise of twilight.

His mother was not kind with his missteps, quick with the flat side of her blade. His skin was awash with a myriad of purple and black, yellow and green, remnants of his mother's anger. He understood the need for it, the endless drills, the corrections. His skills needed to be as sharp as his sword and just as deadly. 

Though, afterward, when he was permitted to retreat to his room to lick his wounds and drink the numbing droughts prepared by the Stella, he would wonder when his mother would stop being so cruel.

His only reprieve was his tutoring with Cometa in the library, their  eyes aided by the ever-present burning orbs of starfire the Stella ran in clusters along the walls and ceiling.  And occasionally, when the temple offerings were sparse, Nicky was permitted to accompany the Stella on night hunts. He chased deer and boar through the underbrush, shyly accepting Cometa's praise and words of thanks. He loved those nights most of all. 

He worked and trained and studied. He was also young and working was not all that he cared to do.

He spent whatever free time he had before dawn in the stables, sneaking the horses treats, petting the pink velvety noses of the mares. Often Cometa would find him curled up in a nest of hay of his stallion’s stall, a beautiful palomino with hair as light and feathery as dragonfly wings, fast asleep from the trials of the day. 

Older, edging ever so closer to the cusp of adulthood, Nicky found the courage to sneak out with his horse into the woods between guard shifts and ride to the far edges of their lands’ all for the feeling of the wind in his hair. To bask in the feeling of being alone. 

It was a night like any other, he’d snuck out of the castle after dinner to the stables where he saddled his stallion for a ride.

He was running his horse along the forest border, deeper into the woods than he ever dared before, fueled by discovery and a misguided youthful certainty. 

It was exciting, it was freeing. It was also stupid.

An hour into his ride, right about the time he would turn back to head home, the sky turned a smoothed shade of blue, he rode his horse past a thick grove of trees and almost ran over a man.

His horse reared up, spooked, and bucked Nicky off, galloping into the brush leaving Nicky behind, sore and scared, staring up at the man he almost trampled.

“Well, hello there,” the man said, a curved sword pointing outwards at Nicky’s chin.

He was young, maybe a couple of years older than Nicky was, but still lingering in that not-a-boy not-yet-a-man space. He was broad in the shoulders, accentuated by golden-plated armor. He pulled off his plumed helmet with his free hand and dropped it to the floor, revealing a head of rich black curls, a handsome face, and a nose dotted with freckles.

He blinked, and Nicky could swear he saw his eyes flash gold. But then they went dark again.

“Will you not introduce yourself? You are in my woods.” 

Nicky scoffed, indignant. “Your woods? You are on the lands of the di Genova’s, I should bring you to my mother for trespassing.”

The man smirked. “Ah, but it seems I am the one with a sword to your throat.”

Nicky raised his chin to the point of the sword, so sure of his stature. But when he reached the point of it he gasped as it drew blood, and scrambled backward.

He fingered the cut he made himself and stared at the blood pooling on his fingers, silvery, strange. It looked awfully pale in the morning light. He’d never  _ bled  _ before.

The man looked just as shocked as Nicky was to see it. 

“You are  _ ya amar _ ,” he said, breathless.

Nicky didn’t know what that meant. He gave a glare the man’s way. “I am the Moon,” he declared with a confidence he didn’t feel. 

“Yes and no. Not yet,” the man refuted, grinning as if he’d caught a prize. “You are like me. We still have time to grow.” He sheathed his sword and reached out to offer Nicky a hand up.

“My name is Yusuf al-Kaysani, but most everyone calls me Joe.”

Nicky eyed the hand warily, but took it after a moment, smearing some of his blood on Joe’s palm. 

“I am Nicolo, but you may call me Nicky.” Nicky stepped back, uncertain of this stranger whose very energy seemed to pour out of him with warm golden rays of life.

“You are still trespassing, Joe,” Nicky sniffed, looking about beyond the clearing for any sign of his horse. “And you’ve lost me my favorite stallion.”

“If he is your favorite then he will come back to you eventually,” Joe chirped. He was circling Nicky with interest, bending down at the waist to look closer at Nicky’s clothes. Nicky jumped away, sneering. 

“What are you  _ doing? _ ”

“Oh,” Joe perched up, rubbed a hand at the back of his neck, sheepish. “I’m sorry that was rude. I’m just curious,” he said, like that answered who the hell he was or what he was doing in this part of the woods. 

“My mother let me go off on my own today,” he said. “She thinks I should see more of the world myself.”

Joe’s smile turned mischievous, “You look like someone who’s been sneaking around.”

“It's not sneaking if it's my own property,” Nicky said.

“You are very defensive, Nicolo,” Joe said. He hadn’t lost his grin, and it made him look young, boyish. He came and clapped Nicolo on the shoulder like he would an old friend, someone he’d known for years, not almost skewered on the edge of his sword a moment ago.

“Come, we will find your horse together,” he said. 

Nicky, who was not used to being directed by anyone but his mother, found himself sputtering and striding after Joe, who walked into the forest without fear. 

How often did Joe walk the lands the Moon claimed without her knowing? 

It wasn’t impossible. Their estate was far enough from the human settlements that the forest went undisturbed by anyone but Nicky and his household. It was a lot of ground to cover. The Stella could easily have missed the tracks Joe would have left behind. 

Luckily, Nicky’s stallion was only spooked, and remained uninjured not far from the grove. He’d made himself a home in an open field of wildflowers, fresh, and bursting into bloom with the oncoming of spring. Many were still budded, but the air was fragrant with florals, the sweet tang of fresh grass. The last lingering crickets of midnight were petering off with a soft chirp.

Nicky looked up and noticed that the sky was no longer dark, but urging onto a deep lavender, stained in pink at the edges.

So that was dawn then.

Joe walked up to Nicky’s horse, cooing under his breath. The stallion didn’t protest, and wasn't scared by the strange man grabbing for his reins and drawing him over to his master. Nicky supposed that should mean something, that Joe could so easily tame his finicky horse with his kind hands, his low, lilting voice.

Joe held the reins out, grinning, like it was a gift. 

Nicky pursed his lips but took them. He could have gotten the horse himself. 

“Is this where we part ways, Nicky?” Joe asked, sounding genuinely curious. 

“You shouldn’t linger here,” Nicky said. What he really meant was  _ they  _ shouldn’t. Nicky surmised that was more his fault than Joe’s, lingering out here in the woods way past his bedtime. 

Joe had the freedom to wander it seemed, Nicky did not.

“Ah, but I have you to protect me, lord of the land,” Joe teased.

If he was bothered by Nicky’s brusqueness he didn’t show it. He watched Nicky mount his horse and stepped perfunctorily back for Nicky to urge it into a gallop.

Nicky did not look back, but he watched the sky above change color, into a rich orange-gold, dyed in streaks of pink, the color of happiness. The color of curiosity, something smug that crackled on his tongue and lingered behind his eyelids when he snuck back home to bed, and finally went to sleep. 

~

Nicky could spend hours reading. Men, for all their foolishness, did very well with their literature. And while Nicky was no poet, he could appreciate the finer arts. 

His mother saw to it that he could fight and win, his skill with the longsword and crossbow were unrivaled, but if he was to be a lord of the night he would need to know more of life than the battlefield. 

Cometa saw to this education, and she had no trouble getting him to study with her. He’d spend many happy hours with her in the library curled over a table laden with books.

She had a flighty nature, running about the castle conducting her own business with a speed that rivaled the wind. But she was sure of her place, and an easy instructor. Nicky’s mother had little patience for slip-ups, but Cometa did.

Nicky was not afraid to ask her questions.

“Would you tell me of the gods, Cometa?” 

Cometa hummed, her attention occupied by the old dusty tome on the table in front of her.

“What gods, Nicolo? You will have to be more specific,” she replied.

Nicky shrugged. “Gods like me, is this not the name men bestow upon us?”

She looked up then, a brow arched. “Some would say so. In truth, we are hard to define. Some things simply  _ are  _ Nicolo, there is no need to group them.”

Nicky frowned, fiddling with his hands in his lap. 

“But I met someone,” he muttered. He swallowed, gathered up his courage and looked her in the eye. “I think he was like me.”

Cometa went very still.

“What was his name?” she asked.

“Yusuf.”

Cometa nodded once in affirmation, and by the look on her face, Nicky thought she already knew who Yusuf was. And she did not like that Nicky knew of him. 

She rose from the table without a word and went over to one of the high bookshelves on the wall. She pulled over the library ladder, climbed up to the top row, fingering over the spines of books until she came upon what she found suitable. And then she tapped at the wood behind the book. There was a loud click that made Nicky jump, and above the shelf a compartment popped open, where Cometa reached inside. She pulled out a very old but well-kept journal tied with twine.

Nicky was waiting for her when she climbed back down, staring, wide-eyed.

“It goes unsaid that the contents of this book stay between us, yes, Nicolo?” she said, suddenly so very tall, suddenly so very solemn.

He nodded and she guided him over to the chairs by the fireplace where she settled into the chaise and he cuddled up to her side, peering at the journal with barely contained anticipation.

“I have known your mother since the day she was formed, then manifested,” Cometa started, untying the twine and flattening out the journal pages for Nicky to see. On it were sketches of a woman. 

“Your mother is mighty. She is what men would call a “greater” god,” Cometa said. “But she is not the only one, and she is not as powerful as they might think.” 

Cometa ran a finger down the sketch of the lady. She had been sketched mid-smirk, her lips drawn up in the corner, mischievous. She was pale with short-cropped hair and eyes cool like stone. 

Cometa flipped the page and on the next there was the woman again. She was laying down on a couch, joyful, and curled up to another woman who Nicky slowly, shockingly, came to recognize as Quynh.

They looked happy together. The poets Nicky poured over might call it love.

“I don’t—” Nicky started then shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “Why are you showing me this Cometa? What does this have to do with Yusuf?”

She flipped through a couple more pages in an answer. 

He stiffened at what she stopped on.

“We are all connected Nicolo,” she said softly, for the first time in his life he thought she might cry. “Even when we are apart, the bonds we make linger. And they strengthen with time, or they fester.

“Your mother is more inclined to the latter.” 

On the next page was a loose piece of paper tucked into the book, Cometa tugged it out. On it was Nicky’s mother. She looked younger somehow, her head thrown back in a patch of charcoal-shaded grass. 

And on the flip side of the paper was a different woman, one of the most beautiful Nicky had ever seen, though it was drawn more crudely. This was not the same artist, but they were talented still. This new woman had a riot of curly black hair, and eyes, a mouth, a chin, so achingly similar to Joe’s.

Even so, the resemblance was unmistakable. And so were the burned edges lingering on the paper’s corner. Cracked and black and crumbling. The stain encroached upon the drawn head of Joe’s mother. As if it were drawn from the fire hastily, with regret. 

~

Nicky wished he slept as he usually did. Unbothered and hidden while the day sizzled then softened outside his curtained window. But he tossed and turned, stood and paced. He came to his mother’s breakfast table with dark circles under his eyes and a pallored expression, no matter how many times he tried to pinch color into his cheeks. 

“Eat, Nicolo,” his mother said, having taken notice of his grogginess. He was taking small sips of the watered-down wine, and playing with the cubed melon on his plate.

“Yes, Mother,” he answered immediately, spearing a bit of honeydew and chewing, swallowing, even as it sat cold in his stomach.

The drawings Cometa showed him ran wild through his mind. He could think of nothing else. He dared not look at his mother directly. Reading people was a talent of hers.

His thoughts turned to Joe instead, his brashness. How did he walk so easily in a forest that was not his? 

“Nicolo,” someone said.

“Nicolo!” This time there was a burst of chill within the room, the chandelier above them rattled with restrained power. A few spindles of frost dangled from the edges of the crystals. 

At the head of the table, his mother was staring at him with her mouth pursed, her hand raised slightly as if she were a second away from grabbing him for attention.

“Apologies, Mother,” he said quickly, eager to soothe her. “I am not feeling myself today.” Better to be as truthful with her as he could. Lies would put him in danger here. 

His mother hummed but did not press further. “Quynh will be accompanying us with the hunting party today,” she said, though it was more of an order. “Finish your food, collect yourself and meet us with the horses.”

Her breakfast finished, she stood from the chair and left the dining hall, a few stray Stella at her heels. Nicky, though his stomach turned at the sight of his plate, forced himself through the bites of fruit until it was finished. Plate clean, he went to get saddled, where Quynh and his mother already sat at the forefront of the hunting party, his mother on her black mare and Quynh on a dapple-gray stallion.

Nicky had always been awed by Quynh’s horse. The stallion was unlike any traditional mount. He was somehow always wet, his coat shone like a pond frozen over, and at his feet the plumes of hair moved like waves. If he was galloping, seafoam dripped from his hooves, leaving puddles behind. A water horse, flesh but not. 

Nicky was soon mounted on his own stallion, less mythical but no less loved, and then his mother led them out the gates and into the woods, a small pack of hounds howling beneath their hooves.

It was spring, and the air was fragrant with the smell of rain and flowers, even in the night. They carried no artificial light with them, no torches or lanterns or anything of the like. The party was bright enough themselves to make way through the forest.

Lady di Genova could serve as a beacon by herself, a cold and guiding light. White and clean and unblemished. The Stella who rode with them were dimmer, but shone in a myriad of different off-white colors. Pale pinks, cool blues, a warm yellow of a middle-aged star. Nicky was like that of a lantern-light, a soft chick-colored yellow, sometimes brighter, sometimes dim, too young yet to have complete control over his hue. But nights like this were good practice. 

Quynh kept an even pace with them all, clicking and cooing at the hounds to keep them on trail. It was not long before one of them perked up, howling, before setting off into the brush after a quarry.

The party kicked their horses into a trot. By the sound of the howling it must be a large animal, a buck or a boar, something that could be chased down and speared with the strong hefty horses. 

Nicky spurned his horse into a gallop, pulling ahead of the rest of the party, young and eager to prove himself on a good hunt. The hounds were leading him further out of the forest into the thinning treeline, where the young saplings clustered and the canopy-cover of the forest made way for the wildflower clearing, awash in moonlight.

Nicky bursted out into the open air before the hounds did, but saw no animal, no rustling of grass, nothing to indicate to what they’d be howling about. 

He circled around, looking over the terrain, confused, before he spotted someone emerging from the other side.

_ Joe? _

“Nicolo!” He was waving his hands back and forth to get Nicky’s attention, as though he didn’t already have it. 

“Yusuf!” Nicky hissed and dismounted, shooing his horse away, back into the treeline. Joe jogged over to meet him, grinning wide, blissfully unaware of the tension churning in Nicky’s gut.

“I told my mother about you,” Joe said. “And well Andromache, too. She’s always around, I can never get a break. But she’s here! She wanted to meet you. I must be a great storyteller, because she’s very eager, and I know you’re a little shy but don’t worry I—”

“ _ Yusuf,”  _ Nicky whispered fiercely, the intensity burning his throat. He had Yusuf by the shoulders and was doing his best to push him away, before the rest of the party came. Already a few of the hounds had trotted up to Nicky’s side and were whining and sniffing hesitantly at Joe’s feet, like they couldn’t figure out what he was.

“Nicky?” Joe looked hurt, he was pushing back at Nicky’s attempts. He was broader, stronger than Nicky even at this age. “Are you nervous? It’s okay, Andromache is scary, but I won’t let her do anything to you.”

“No, no, you have to get out of here Joe, you can’t be here,” Nicky exclaimed frantically. Out from the other side of the woods Nicky saw someone come out of the darkness. A woman, tall and slender, with her hair cut short by her ears. There was a sudden tang of metal and dirt in the air. 

_ Power.  _

Another god.  _ Older.  _

_ She was from the notebook.  _

“Yeah, yeah it’s your land I know, but you really need to study your maps. This is a  _ border.  _ It belongs to both of us.”

“Yes,” the woman said, finally closing in. She looked at them both from where she stood behind Joe, a hand on his shoulder. She had high cheekbones and intelligent eyes, Nicky would bet she could see everything. “Hello, little Moon.”

Nicky reached for his sword, an unconscious movement. He didn’t like how she was looking at him. All-knowing. It wasn’t predatory but it was a near thing. She knew what he was, and would have no problem picking him apart.

He was a second away from drawing his sword, when the hunting party burst into the clearing. His mother and Quynh at the head, followed by a dozen more howling hounds. They came rushing in, forming a tight circle around Nicky and Joe and this new Andromache _.  _

His mother had her hood pulled down, her face pitched into a snarl.

Quynh, looked like she’d seen a ghost.

“How _dare_ you?” His mother spat. “Get him away from my son, Andromache.”

“My lady,” Quynh started, and it sounded like she was going to beg _. _

“No!” His mother actually turned her horse and went at Quynh with her sword, forcing her back. “I don’t want to hear anything from you. Not about this.”

Joe had backed up into Andromache. He was staring up at Nicky’s mother with wide, fearful eyes, but his chin was pointed up. Putting on a brave face.

Nicky thought he might faint. 

“Trying to trap my son, Andromache?” his mother said.

“I’ve done nothing, and neither has Yusuf. They’re boys. They met, they talked, they played. Nothing more.”

“Nicolo,” his mother said, looking at him. She had her head tilted just to the side, like she was assessing him, his breath, his body. “What did he do to you?”

“Mother, please,” he was stammering, his heart felt like it would beat out of his chest. “I only met him once, I didn’t mean to—”

“Speak  _ clearly, _ ” she snapped, the sky above them was darkening, clouds rolling over the moon.

“I—”

“Don’t speak to him like that!”

Heaven and Earth. It was Joe. He’d torn himself from Andromache’s arms and marched right up to the Moon’s stallion. He stood in front of Nicky, his body a shield. 

“Move, boy,” his mother said, monotone. There was no inflection at all in her voice, Nicky couldn't read her. But the night was so dark and the air tasted of snow in spring.

“Nicky did nothing wrong! We weren’t doing anything wrong! I just met him by accident, in the forest,” Joe said. He was still shaking, he couldn’t smother that down, but Nicky felt… protected in a way he didn’t know how to describe. It was a good feeling, but there was dread flowing through every vein, every nerve.

“Nothing is ever by accident with you lot,” his mother said.

“You will hear of this, Andromache, we are not done.” His mother turned her horse around and cantered back to where they came, the rest of the party following. It was Quynh, who came to collect Nicky.

“Come, Nicolo,” she said softly, coaxing. “You cannot stay with him.”

“Quynh, what’s going on?” he asked, with her he was not afraid to show the tears in his eyes.

Quynh cut a glance to Andromache, who was watching them, dark and stormy.

“We will take care of it, Nicolo. Now come.” She extended a hand to pull him up onto the horse.

He hesitated, not knowing why. But it was only when Joe nodded, though he was quiet as the grave and painfully confused, did Nicolo find it in him to join Quynh on her mount.

She led them away, the last lone rider in the night.

  
  


~

A god’s emotions coincide with their power.

Just as Nicky’s skin glowed when he was happy, just as the night sky brightened when he took a peaceful walk outside in the forest, content in his duty, did the sky darken when he was angry. 

His mother never seemed to glow for the sake of it. It was perfunctory, dutiful, her blasts of light. Too often did Nicky see her darkened. Today she was the most angry he had ever seen her. The night was dark, and the wolves howled. 

Nicky flinched, leaning into Cometa’s embrace and watched as his mother thundered through the stables, yelling at the Stella. Herding them into a riding party in the courtyard. Above them there was no light from the moon, it was darker than Nicky had ever seen the sky before. There were sounds coming from the forest, baser sounds, growling and prowling things that dared not bare themselves to light. Tonight, they came and they hunted.

Quynh was still on her stallion who was snapping and snorting up a storm in the courtyard. Agitated, his hooves dripped seawater, and everywhere he stepped the dirt grew wet.

His mother finally mounted on her own horse, moved forward to urge Quynh from where she blocked the road out of the courtyard. “Move, Quynh, this is none of your concern.”

“It is when you gather your guard to war on the curiosity of children,” she replied, eyes narrowed. Though they were miles from the sea, Nicky could swear he heard it rumbling.

His mother snorted. “This is not curiosity. The al-Kaysani boy stood on my land and assaulted my heir. It was only a matter of time.”

Nicky, who up until then was content to ride out this storm in the comforting arms of his tutor, sprung from Cometa’s arms, and strode up to the two women with his head held high. 

“Joe did nothing to me!” he said. “He came to talk, that is all.”

“Was he there to  _ talk  _ the first time you came upon him, Nicolo?” his mother countered.

“Yes!” he said, but it didn’t sound convincing even to his ears. He shrunk back at the tight anger on his mother’s face. “I don’t know, I, he found me and he did me no harm. What does it matter what he was here for?”

“He shouldn’t be,” his mother said simply. She looked to Quynh. “I would find an answer for myself.”

Quynh stared at her for a long while, but his mother would not budge, the darkness of the sky did not yield. 

Finally, she moved her stallion out of his mother’s way, clearing the path. 

“I will escort you to where you wish to go. And Nicolo is coming,” Quynh said. 

“Absolutely not—”

There was a sounding through the courtyard, reminiscent of a wave on the crest of a storm, roaring as if the surf had come to their door. 

The horses spooked and reared, Cometa hung onto the stable door, her fingers digging into the wood, the darker things in the forest paused at the salt in the air.

His mother was not so outwardly phased. All she did was move her horse around Quynh’s and with a single bark of command to her charge, galloped off into the forest with the Stella sparkling behind her.

A stableboy had brought Nicky’s palomino. Quynh watched Nicky mount, and only once he was seated and set into a canter, did she follow, holding up the rear and herding them all south to warmer climates.

~

The al-Kaysani’s made their palace out of a mountain colored gold.

It took them all night to reach the desert where the Sun gods dwelled and by the time the woodlands thinned into shrubs colored yellow-green, to golden rock under their horses’ hooves, it was day. And Nicky, who had spent all his life in the shadows between starlight, felt  _ blinded.  _

There was a beauty here he found hard to describe. Nicky existed in the coolness of a forest. The white-spotted does leaping through streams. The sharp-clawed cats that feasted under gnarled tree branches. The scent of pine and snow and cave. In the desert he felt uncomfortably bare. There was no shade, nothing to do but ride the plains with the distant mountains but an orange beacon as their guide. They rode over great rolling hills of sand that merged into red-brown canyons, dotted with spots of olive-toned shrubland where striped goats and antelopes took their sustenance. Underfoot, asps and adders sprang for their ankles. There were dark holes in the sand that hinted at scorpions, wasps, and smaller, fiercer things.

Everything here was warm, everything. Even the water he spotted in sparse pools circled with dry-green trees. They rode around the desert towns that shimmered, like a mirage on the horizon, large spires of golden clay rising up into the sky, the buildings lined up against the dried remains of a riverbed. The occasional camel caravan spotted in the distance. Whatever droplets lingered in the sand were to be harvested within the hour, or sucked up by the heat.

And everywhere, traces of sunlight. It glimmered in the river-paths carved between canyon-walls. 

His mother did not spare the scenery a single glance. She’d long ago pulled up the hood on her robe, keeping her head covered in flowing gray fabric. She didn’t seem affected by the heat, where Nicky tugged at his high collar and the edges of his sleeves. 

Their party slowed as they approached the base of the mountain where two guards stood in gold and white armor, long swathes of fabric swung over their shoulders, embroidered with tiny clouds and golden suns in shiny thread. They thumped the butts of their spears on the ground in a warning.

Quynh pushed her way to the front so that she was before Nicky’s mother. 

“Lady Quynh,” the two guards addressed her, bowing their heads in a hesitant familiarity. 

One of the guards squinted at Nicky and his mother before murmuring, “You bring the Moon to the door of our mistress with no forewarning?”

“It is done with pure intentions,” Quynh says. “I would ask that you let us pass to see your mistress and the young lord.”

“Ah,” said the guard, eyeing Nicky. “That explains some things. You may pass.”

He whistled and up high on the cliff there was a shouted answer, the gates to the palace opening up with a groan. Quynh stirred her horse into a canter and they followed her up the canyon path. 

The further along they went, the more the path descended into the heart of the mountain, walls of rock rose and rose, painted in the layers of sediment that indicated at the passing of time. There, a red stripe, beige, a swirl of yellow, stark limestone interlaid with small fossils bright as bone.

The path eventually opened up into a courtyard. To his left Nicky saw the carved out columns of a hallway, and beyond it a green glimpse of a garden. To his front was the palace, a burnt yellow rising high with the mountain and out into the open air. He thought of it as ancient, he thought that the Earth and the Sun must have created this together, a splendor of warmth and cooling dirt.

Up ahead, from the elegant archway of the palace doors, Joe came running.

He was dressed in his golden finery, glimmering and bright. He had a scimitar in his left hand, poised outwards in attack. His eyes widened when he saw Nicky.

But before he could jump forwards to greet the Moon’s son, there was a hand on his shoulder stalling him, and out from the palace stepped its mistress, armored and ready for the day.

The Sun was as beautiful as she’d been drawn in the book, even more so. Her hair wrapped up tight atop her head, only a few curly flyaways peeking out from the covering. In her arm rested a warrior’s helm, shining bronze. Nicky imagined staring that face down in the heat of battle, with her warm, sharp eyes.

The Moon was tense at her arrival but dismounted smoothly. It looked as if she was going to march up to Joe’s mother, and unleash fury, but she stopped at the sight of Andromache who’d emerged from the shadow of the doorway and was leaning against the frame, her arms crossed.

Heavens above, she smelled old _.  _ She smelled like power. There was an overlying scent of dirt and grass in the air. Combined with the scent of the sun, a burning smell like a blast of sand and fire to the nostrils, Nicky was suddenly very aware of where he stood in the hollowed-out rock of a sunny mountain. The Earth standing in front of him, a whisper of a smirk on her lips as she eyed his mother, who, for the first time in his life, looked something close to afraid _.  _

“You have business with us, I assume,” the Earth said to his mother. “It’s been millennia since I’ve seen your face.” 

His mother lifted up her chin. “I am not here willingly. But because of the stock you’ve taken charge with, Andromache.”

Andromache snorted, walking down to stand beside Joe’s mother who was eyeing them all shrewdly, Joe standing at her front.

“And what has my son done to cause such ire?” Joe’s mother said, voice clipped.

“He would take my own heir from me, lingering on lands where he is forbidden.”

“The land belongs to us all,” Andromache said dryly. “Or have you forgotten? You have no claim over it.”

His mother pulled up a hand, balled into a fist and the Stella they’d brought unsheathed their swords in one well-trained swoop. The Sun’s guards followed, creeping in close with their swords and spears raised.

“You may think so,” Nicky’s mother reiterated. “But I would have my home and my heir undisturbed to keep peace, we agreed upon.”

“Peace need not be so complex,” Joe’s mother said. Nicky saw her hand squeeze Joe’s shoulder. “Our sons are young, it is no surprise they would seek companionship in those of their likeness.”

“There are no others of  _ our _ likeness,” his mother said, almost a snarl. She waved at the Stella who stepped back from their combat stance.

“Only a fool would attack you here,” she said, to both Sun and Earth. “I am not, though my son may be. Keep your son to your lands. He would learn more, and live longer.”

Andromache was looking at her with a barely concealed air of distaste, Nicky had no doubt that should the Sun give the slightest indication, there would be a brawl between the gods in this beautiful place. 

Still, the Sun did nothing but nod. She whispered something in Joe’s ear that made him purse his lips. He walked back into the palace, with one last look at them all, his eyes lingering on Nicky before he disappeared.

With the horses recollected, and his mother’s anger mollified, they left the palace of Earth and Sun.

It would be many years before Nicky saw it, or Joe, again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come check me out on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/1derspark)!
> 
> And as always comments and kudos are appreciated and feed the beast :)


	3. Interlude 1

Andromache was roughly 4.5 billion years old.

She remembered very little of her early years except in flashes of violence.

Crashing rock and fire and fury, she was shaped in the cradle of war. Her first concrete memories were of open fields and wide skies. She emerged onto the planet as something hardened, but she loved the gentleness of the grass. 

She could spend days riding the plains of her Earth on horseback, uncaring of where she was going and what she was doing. After all this was her planet. It was  _ her. _

She soon discovered that she was not alone. There were manifestations of everything here. The smaller gods of the forests. Gods of flowers, saplings, deer, fish and stone. They crept up to her, half-humanoid, barely yet formed. She commanded them without much thought or energy. 

There were the humans too, fragile and loud and really rather stupid. Stamping their homesteads down on the banks of rivers. Fucking and fighting and dying to their heart's content. 

She left them alone. They did not extend the same courtesy. The altars and temples they’d built for her were flush with offerings, she took when they weren’t looking. 

Funny enough, as old as she was and often felt, she was far from the oldest. She could tell from the moment she was aware, that there was something  _ greater  _ than herself here. 

The Sun paid her frequent visits in the beginning, often she served as accompaniment, on those long rides Andromache favored. Two figures on dark horses racing through the desert, pushing their horses to sweat, glistening, and snorting through the oasis towns.

“Are we the only ones in the world?” Andromache asked her. “It feels like it.”

The Sun laughed. She’d poured water over her head to wash off the grains of sand from her face. The water clung in her hair and stuck there, aquamarine crystals woven between black strands, she was always wearing a crown, even when she wasn’t.

“No, you just haven’t seen enough of it yet,” she said. “Come, I think it's time you meet a friend.”

Believe it or not there was once a time where even Andromache did not know everything.

Believe it or not there was once a time the Sun could take her horse and trot casually through the border woods, a hand curled out to the flowers that dotted the path, humming into her palms that glowed a gentle yellow. They’d spring back from her hands into the green, more vibrant, new shoots springing up around their bases. 

There were no guards back then. No Stella. In fact, the stars had more free reign over their lives than Andromache did. There were only a few who attended their mistress full-time in her estate. Most of them Andromache spotted in the open fields on clear nights, laughing and running their way through the grass, bright little orbs of fire behind them. 

There was no need to guard anything back then. 

Out from the castle gates came a woman in black armor, her hair tied up against her head, intricately braided. Her face was stern, one of a commander, but her eyes softened upon the sight of the Sun riding through the gates.

“Hello, my friend,” the Moon said, a smile dawning on her lips.

The Sun grinned, wide and contented, before rushing over into a hug. They clapped each other on the backs like old friends did, those who’d been bonded together by blood and battle and hope.

The Sun held her hands flush with the Moon’s forearms, fingers running over the designs on her silver gauntlets, murmuring between them with a smile. 

What Andromache would learn is that the Sun and Moon actually knew each other very little. That the Sun had known Andromache longer. The Moon was younger than her, by a good few million years or so. It is only that when the Sun and Moon met was it a joining that hinted at fate. Something akin to the recognition of souls.

_ Hello, there you are. I’ve waited for you all my life. _

_ Be the thing that buries m e.  _

~

It took many years for Androamche to come into her full power. In her early days the Earth was a dangerous place to be. Storms and eruptions and rockslides. If she sneezed too hard sometimes a crack would form in the Earth and a town would go down with it. 

She was lucky to have the Moon and Sun to guide her.

They were celestials. A different kind of god. Where Andromache’s power was tied to the land they walked, their power was in the sky. The beyond. It was an ethereal feeling being around them. Their power didn’t taste the same. It felt like something  _ other,  _ more powerful, older.

The Sun and the Moon had learned to manage their powers quickly, or risk destroying everything. The humans were fortunate they did. Andromache was fortunate they did.

By the time they are teaching her it is like training with masters of craft. Though their teaching styles are very different.

Lady al-Kaysani is a guiding hand. She took Andromache to the forests she was to rule over and taught her how to manage the trees, the soil, the herds of elk and horses. She taught Andromache how to put her hands into the dirt and feed her lifeblood into the roots and fungus. A slow, healing connection. Andromache walked through the grasslands after wildfires with the Sun and together they worked to bring the sprouts up from the soil.

The Sun could bring forth life, this was her power. Andromache was her gauntlet.

The Moon was different. She dumped Andromache in the wilderness at night with nothing but a small dagger and the clothes on her back and gave her until sunrise to find her way out of the tangled woods, with no light of the moon to guide her.

She hunted her too, chasing Andromache through the forest on her horse with a party of stars at her back, whooping, while the Moon set a slow, creeping frost at her back, eating up the leaves and the bark. Her skin.

In the beginning Andromache emerged from the woods with frost burns, her skin marked red and raw, the soles of her feet burning. 

By the end Andromache could turn on the Moon goddess herself, her power honed by survival. A powerful motivator. Only once Andromache could get within three feet of the Moon with her dagger unsheathed did this training stop.

Finally, she was hardened.

But not all of this was doom and gloom, fear in the forest. 

Andromache spent many days with the celestials in their palaces, laughing, drinking, sitting still in a posed posture while the Sun tried to capture her likeness in her drawing journal. 

“You’re a much better model than di Genova,” the Sun would say, her tongue peeking out between her teeth while she drew.

“You take forever,” the Moon protested from where she sat on the low couch in the Sun’s gardens. She had multiple rolls of parchments spread over the table in front of her along with a long glass of fresh-pressed grapefruit juice from the Sun’s gardens. 

“Ah, stop being stubborn,” the Sun said, waving her off. She shot a teasing glance at Andromache over the top of her sketchbook. Leatherbound, brown, the cover smooth as butter to the touch.

“I can draw her better when she works anyway. Her face is so expressive,” she whispered.

Andromache chuckled behind her hand, then straightened as the Moon shot a glare their way. But it was good-natured, there was a smile behind those lips and her eyes were fond for the al-Kaysani as she drew.

Andromache watched them and the softer, quieter part of herself hoped for something similar.

She would get it.

And it would be better.

However for the two women she was jealous of, living and breathing together in the shadow of their castles, they become something different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come check me out on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/1derspark)!
> 
> And as always comments and kudos are appreciated and feed the beast :)


	4. Part 2

The birth of a god cannot be predicted, neither is it uniform.

Nicky came from the body of his mother. He was once a babe, once wailing, held in the arms of a midwife as she wiped his white skin clean.

(He suspected that Yusuf al-Kaysani was born in the same way.)

But some gods, like Quynh and Andromache, just  _ are.  _

They do not change or waver, they simply existed, and have existed. There is no heir to their throne, they will live on and on and on until they do not. 

Being of such an age, Andromache and Quynh have seen many others come and go. They were almost always there to see a new God born, in whatever form that may take.

Nicky was with Quynh the day the Wind transformed. And it was the first time since that fateful day in the field that he saw Andromache.

(It was the first time in a very long while that Quynh and Andromache were in the same room as well, unescorted by their mistresses.)

He was now a man. Young, but past the shiny prestige of an adult newly formed. He’d grown into those coltish arms and legs of his youth. His face has stretched to accommodate his nose, but not quite so much as he may have wished. 

His mother, who in his adult years showed signs of age, delegated many of her duties to him. Nicky ran the horses, patrolled the borders of their land in the night with the Stella, kept a tallied inventory of their offerings with Cometa’s help. He was busy, and he did not have time to think of other things.

(Only rarely, curled up in the darkness of his daybed hidden from the sunlight by heavy curtains and cool walls of stone, did he think of Joe. His friend. His something. 

It was foolish to harbor such feelings. They had shared very little together in the grand scheme of it all. It meant nothing. It should mean nothing to befriend such a person.)

He saw Quynh less frequently as he did as a child but he still had much to learn from her. Most days they would meet at the sea where they fought and trained and commanded the water to their will. But on this day Nicky met Quynh at the edge of the forest and found her in a set of dirty, roughed-up clothes, her hood drawn up to hide her face.

“Why do you look like that?” he asked her.

“We’re going to town,” she said, tossing a wrapped bundle of clothes at him. “Strip. And put those on.”

“What’s so important about a human town?”

She waved him off. “Don’t be so high and mighty Nicolo. The men may worship you but I don’t. Come.”

Nicky was… hesitant. He didn’t  _ dislike  _ human towns, but he thought them strange. Cramped clusters of fragile buildings, one lightning strike away from a pile of ashes. 

His mother never thought of them except for the occasional raiding of temples. She was more than content to snatch the offerings left, but never allowed herself to walk along the muddy alleyways, the roaring taverns, the marketplaces stinking of fish and meat and fried food.

He was fascinated as Quynh led him through the streets, bustling with men and women. Horses, mercenaries, the occasional goat herd ushered to the slaughterhouses by a farmer and his dogs. There was a never-ending torrent of noise. He wished he was back in the forest, with its cool, quiet sounds. The trickle of water, the harmonic howl of the world. The crick-screech of the night frogs in mating season. 

And men worked in daylight. He knew this, but Nicky wasn’t used to walking around so bared, everyone so available to see. He kept the hood of his cloak up and sturdy, pulling on the edges to make sure his face was hidden. 

Quynh rolled her eyes at him more than once, jumping at a child running underfoot, a barrel of apples knocked over by a merchant in haste. 

By the time they reached their destination, Nicky was wound tighter than a bowstring. And Quynh had brought him to a noisy tavern, which wouldn’t do him any favors. 

The tavern, which stank of ale and piss and the foul odor of mortals, immediately upon entry was also  _ thrumming  _ with power. This was a human place, owned by human men, and worked as such. Nicky was more than sure this was not the hideaway of some god. But when he looked to the far corner booth, he realized why his body thrummed with awareness. 

Such things happened when you put five gods in a confined place.

Three of them sat at a circular booth in the corner by the stairs, huddled over a large collection of mugs frothing in beer and wine. Along with what Nicky guessed was a human man. 

One of the gods was Andromache. One was in the form of a sandy-haired man he did not recognize. And the other was Yusuf al-Kaysani, son of the sky and the golden light, grown.

Quynh shoved forward and practically dragged a befuddled Nicky to their table where Andromache looked up at him with a shit-eating grin.

“Hello Nicolo,” she said. She gave him a long and leisurely once over. “You’ve grown.”

“These things tend to happen as time goes on,” he said stiffly, sliding into the booth carefully. 

He was perched on the end, brushing up against Andromache, while Quynh sat on the other side next to Joe. The man and the strange god sandwiched between them both. 

Nicky made himself focus on the newcomers. He’d never been this close to a human and he’d never met a  _ new  _ god before.

The mortal man was dark-skinned, clean-shaven, with an open, inquisitive face. He smiled gently when he caught Nicky looking at him. He didn’t seem intimidated, sitting with five gods, which only made Nicky trust him less. 

As for the god, he’d been manifested into the shape of a big broad man, with a mop of honey-blond hair with a handsome nose and chin. He had a broad soldier’s body, if they’d been sitting in a more public setting no doubt he’d be offered a drink or two. But as handsome as he may have been, he looked far from receptive to happiness. He carried an aura of wildness and the smell of something chilling and wet. Like a sorrowful cat left out in the rain. All pitiful yowls and restrained rage, ready to claw at the nearest helping hand.

Outside the wind was blowing a wretched tune through the alleyways. 

Ah, there we go then. 

The Wind was a temperamental thing, far from controlled. He should not have expected any more of its God who was slurping down ale with a scowl, like he couldn’t decide whether or not he should drown himself in it. 

“This is Copley and Booker,” Andromachesaid, finally following through with introductions. “They’re new.”

“We can tell,” Joe said over the rim of his mug, eyeing Booker’s general disheveledness with distaste. 

“Now, now, Yusuf,” Quynh interjected. “Not all of us are raised in ivory castles. Sebastien is on a learning curve, and we’re here to help.”

“I thought your name was Booker,” Nicky said.

He looked up, blue eyes glazed. “It is.”

Andromache chortled into her drink.

Well, that was going nowhere. Nicky focused on Copley instead.

“Why are you here?” he asked. He made sure to flicker,  _ just  _ enough to scare. It worked most times, when Nicky encountered a particularly nasty creature in the forest. 

But Copley only seemed curious at what he saw. And Nicky could feel Joe staring at him.

“Do you think all men fear gods?” he asked.

Nicky grinned, slow, and far too wide to be normal. “Maybe you should.”

“Play nice,” Quynh muttered.

“I’m a priest,” Copley said. “I head the Earth temple in town.”

Nicky swung his face sharply to Andromache. “You’ve brought one of those fanatics to dine with us?”

Quynh shot him a glare, but neither Copley nor Andromache seemed offended. Andromache set her cup down slowly on the table, watching him all the while. “Those “fanatics” are providing you with offerings. If you think so lowly of them I’d suggest maybe leaving them be.”

Nicky had to swallow a growl _.  _ He wanted to hit her, he wanted to hit all of them. The noise and the closeness of the tavern was making his head spin. His tongue was coated in the magic of too much,  _ too much,  _ power.

Tired, he turned to Quynh. “Why am I here?” he asked bluntly. 

“Do you have somewhere better to be?” It was Joe who asked, but while it was most certainly a barbed question he also seemed genuinely curious, his head cocked just slightly, awaiting an answer. 

(And though Nicky would not admit it out loud, and was hesitant to do so even with himself, Joe could have asked him anything in any tone of voice and he would be inclined to answer.

It has been too many years to count since Nicky has last seen him, this  _ counterpart _ of his. Would Nicky have been so eager to respond to him had it not been for how they parted?

It felt as though it had been a lifetime, since Nicky’s felt his warmth, though it had not yet been two decades. Droplets in a stream in a god’s time. 

Joe radiated warmth from across the table. He was sporting a thick but well-trimmed beard. Even from under his cloak, which they all wore for a thin sense of anonymity, Nicky could tell how he’s grown and stretched filled out into a man’s body. A  _ god’s  _ body. 

Where Nicky was slender, built like a hunter, Joe was tall and broad-chested. He was a man that drew attention, all warm brown skin and soulful eyes. 

A more animal part of Nicky, something primal, something tied to the oldness of the moon wanted to see Joe bared to nothing but skin and fight him as such.

What would they look like if they came together in war? What kind of destruction would that bring? Not the quiet fury his mother tossed between them, a border and a heartbreak both. No, this would be the kind of companionship that clashed and tore until someone caved. Neither of them would be satisfied with less.

Which one of them would bow down first?)

“I have no reason to be here,” Nicky told him, lying through his teeth. This felt  _ right.  _ Simmering in the presence of others of his kind. It’s been too long since he’s last felt such a brush of power.

“This is an introduction, Nicolo,” Andromache said and though she nodded at Booker when she said it, there was more to this meeting than an outing with the new Wind god. 

A reintroduction.

“You should have brought my mother then,” Nicky said, just to be contrary, to poke at the wound. “She handles matters of communication.”

“You are of age to be handling such matters yourself,” Joe said. 

“I have my own duties to attend to,” Nicky snapped.

“You should be doing more,” Andromachesaid. She was not a gentle god. She was coarse, and imposing, more inclined to let her opponents spear themselves on the rockiness of conversation than save them from embarrassment. Her next words were spoken as such.

“Your mother will not be here forever.”

Nicky stood up from the table, pushing himself out of the booth and stalking out the door, fuming.

He shouldered a few bar patrons along the way, from the way they all stumbled, cursing, covering their sides with a hand, Nicky wasn’t exuding enough control over his strength. Though he couldn’t bring himself to care.

He found himself in one of the town’s many alleyways, slumped up against the dirt-slick wall of a building staring at the ground and trying to keep his breathing even.

“Andromache is right, though she could have been nicer about it.”

Nicky would like to think he was surprised Joe followed him, but he wasn’t. Not with their childhood strung out tight between them like a string since the moment they locked eyes.

“Andromache doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he mumbled.

“Andromache knows more than you or I ever will.” He moved so that he was leaning against the wall as well. Close enough that Nicky could feel his heat, but just shy of touching. 

“Don’t tell me you can’t feel it, Nicolo,” Joe whispered. “Our mothers are weakening.”

Yes. No. Is that what this feeling was? The slow leaking stream of power he felt, increasing by increments in his bones every day. As he grew, his smile brightened and widened, his legs grew stronger, his hands wide and commanding, raised at the sky and sea, conjuring waves as high as Quynh’s, summoning packs of wild things bigger and darker than before. The wolves he ran with at night were not a child’s companion. These were a god’s. 

(And then his mother, with  _ age  _ lines on her face. More paranoid, more dedicated to her defensive cause than ever. A slip of the mind, gone with time.)

“Can we die?” Nicky asked, the question Joe would not instigate.

“Maybe. Dying feels like the wrong word for this,” Joe conceded. “When they are gone we will succeed them. It is not a mortal kind of death. It’s different.

“I don’t really know. I doubt anyone does. We could figure it out together,” Joe said. 

Joe had moved closer, increment by increment until he was almost hovering over Nicky who was leaning against the wall. From a passing glance into the alleyway, it could look like a dalliance. A shadowed maybe-embrace between lovers. 

Nicky pushed off from the wall, extending a respectable distance between them. He circled the narrowed line of the alleyway, assessing. 

“Our mothers would never allow us to meet,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter what they’d allow. We’re grown. Or are you still dictated by your mother’s waxing and waning?”

“Are you?” Nicky countered.

“No,” he said. “I would not linger in such constraints. Andromache taught me to look beyond the veil they pulled over our eyes. I assumed Quynh had done the same to you.”

Oh, not just Quynh. There was still the library. The top-shelf. The hidden journal. 

Joe sighed when he didn’t respond. “Fine. Do as you please.”

He walked to the edge of the alleyway where the sunlight streamed, dancing across the planes of his face.

“When you’re ready to talk, send Booker my way,” he said and left. 

Gone, the alleyway was darker, and it was not late enough for Nicky to brighten it.

Nor did he think he wanted to.

~

Booker became a messenger of sorts for them all. A task operated previously by the lesser Gods inhabiting each estate. Now, correspondence was much quicker, and came to Nicky in an increasing frequency that he didn’t know what to do with.

He got letters from Quynh and Andromache, neither of which he really wanted, but the latter he found more strange. It was nothing out of the blue she spoke of, only business dealings from the temples or patterns in the weather the Nicky  _ supposed  _ she wanted him to assist in. He didn’t, he couldn’t hide that from his mother, but he wrote back to her anyway. 

Quynh had ceased her training sessions with him. He’d mastered all that he could in her eyes. And occasionally now he met with her at the oceanside instead of his mother, to act out their duelings with sea storms.

So he didn’t see her as often, but she sent him more letters to balance it out. Nicky spoke with her of typical trivial things; how the sea was faring that month and how high the tides were. 

But she also spoke of her own court, in a vague offhand manner. Nicky had never seen Quynh’s palace beneath the waves, he didn’t think anyone had. He hoarded the details Quynh dropped like pearls, mentions of her guard, a description of a new building. 

She was being more open, he realized. 

Nicky could see the walls she was deconstructing between them, long-held by his mother’s influence and hindered because of his age.

He had matured and that was of no doubt, and in reality his mother could do little to him anymore if she tried.

She spent most of her nights walking their borderlands with a crazed dedication, a half-dozen Stella at her side, remarking the border, one, twice, and ten times over with no true sense or direction. 

It was Nicky who phased in and out of the forests, tending to the fauna, the flowers blooming sweet jasmine. It was Nicky who stood in the open fields and kept the moon in its cycle. He should have felt exhausted, edging into this tentative takeover, but he felt…  _ powerful. _

Though he did not sit in his mother’s throne, it was almost as if he did. The Stella referred to him in most matters, as did Cometa, who guided where she could and, when she thought he wasn’t looking, smiled with a kind of private pride his mother would never dare to even express.

He was coming into his own. 

(Is this what Yusuf meant? To be of age? The agency that came with newfound authority? Nicky could sweep the night into rapture and he doubted his mother would notice with all her prowling.)

But as much as Nicky may have run his house on his own, he was still the Moon’s son. She was not dead yet. 

And so this formal letter to di Genova was addressed to her.

Where some gods, like Booker, came into themselves with little fanfare but a hollow heart. Others, like Nicky, came with a flourish.

So did the child of the River.

“A gathering... “ his mother drawled from where she sat on the throne, the invitation held between her pointer finger and thumb. “For the River goddess.”

“A ball,” Cometa corrected gently. “Andromache is hosting.”

“She has taken guidance over her?” Nicky asked.

“She has to,” his mother said, sneering. “She’s a feral thing, and she operates in her land. It’s a wonder Andromache would let her out in public at all.”

“It would stir… problems should you decline the invitation,” Cometa said carefully.

“You think they would attack me? For declining?” The Moon spoke so fast she slurred, eager to hear her theories confirmed.

“No, no,” Cometa corrected quickly. “I only meant to say, why would they extend an invitation to you, knowing you’d reject it? A formality to be sure, even Andromache has basic courtesy. But you should do the unexpected. Go to this ball.”

His mother sat with that for a long moment, reading over the invitation once more. 

“I will not leave,” she decided. But then, “Nicolo will go.”

“What?”

“Did you not hear me? Go, attend. And when you return I expect to hear more on Andromache, and whatever it is she wants to stew up with me.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Not just a few weeks ago he’d been in a tavern with more gods than he’d ever seen before. And combined they were only five. 

He’d never been to a  gathering of gods before. 

He did not know how to picture it.

~

Nicky wasn’t expecting this.

Andromache was more subdued in her celebrations, at least that’s what Nicky thought of her, someone who was more inclined to break out a casket of ale for a group of friends, drinking until they dropped.

Andromache’s home is less of a  _ palace _ and more of an illusion. Nicky arrived, dressed in his finery and found… nothing. An open grassland traversed by a small horse herd, and a couple of does, grazing in silence. 

He walked further into the green, cautious, and saw what he thought was a ruin. Some downed columns in the grass, covered in vines and thorns, wild berries clumped at their bases picked at by songbirds. 

Walking through the ruins, stepping over blocks of mossy stone and trying not to trip, he had half a mind to go back home and go about his nightly duties. 

Then he found the steps.

Hidden behind a bushy sapling was a weathered stairway, lit on each side by torches, leading down into the earth. If he listened closely there was the distant rumbling of constant conversation, a high-pitched melody of a fiddle.

He stepped down the stairway, with the comforting thought that no matter what he met down there, they could not kill him. 

The stairway morphed from a patched walkway of packed dirt, into carefully cut beige stone laid in a brick pattern, with small sockets in the walls holding glowing yellow stones that provided light. 

The path eventually led to a door where no guards stood. It was huge and hulking, made of some kind of dark metal, with the likeness of the field above raised in design. Horses and mountains, a great wide sky, a sea to the far left and to Nicky’s surprise, a moon and sun above it all. Split down the middle. Halved.

Nicky reached up for the door knocker, but the door groaned and opened without prompting. On the other side was Quynh.

“You’re late,” she admonished, smirking, and that was all he could see of her face. She was wearing a mask over her eyes and nose, in a deep, dark blue. Green vines or seaweed were pressed up against the side, accompanied by small white flowers and what Nicky thought might have been a small starfish. It matched the skin-tight ball gown she wore, sleeveless, that hugged her torso until it flared out at her knees.

She looked like a siren, not a god. 

“What kind of party is this, exactly?” he asked.

“One you’re underdressed for,” she said, looking him up and down. He’d worn a simple jacket and vest, all black. He hoped Quynh wouldn’t put him in something similar to her own ensemble.

There was an uproar of laughter behind them in the hallway, where at the end of it, Nicky could see a flash of a bright skirt mid-twirl. 

“You look as if you’ve marched to your doom, Nicolo,” Quynh said, not unkindly, merely an observation. She’d known him for long enough, she could gauge his moods fairly decently. 

“This is… new to me.”

“I know,” she said with a smile, before waving him on encouragingly. “I’ll help you. First with your clothes. This is a party, you should be enjoying yourself.”

He followed her further inside, and though she first led him away from the ballroom to presumably fix up his attire, the sound of the party, the thumping of rhythmic feet and ringing laughter followed him.

~

Nicky did not know how to dance. Especially not this kind. A joyous, sweeping sashay with a partner, twirling them across the dance floor in a whimsy of fabric and bubbling glee.

It was all very overwhelming.

Andromache’s minor gods were reminiscent of gemstones. Where his mother’s Stella all twinkled and shone with the light of stars given form, the Earth was surrounded by men and women with hair colored like garnet, locks of pink quartz, their skin ranging from the darkest onyx to a glowing opal that rivaled even Nicky, on a cloudless night. 

Everyone was wearing a mask, like Quynh’s, and the one she had given him.

Quynh had outfitted him in a new suit of sorts. His overcoat was black almost midnight blue and textured in soft velvet that fell down to his knees. He had a shiny ochre cravat, and a white shirt to balance the darkness. She’d wrangled him into a sturdy black leather corset, thinning down his waist. His mask was simple below the eyes baring his mouth and chin, but above it was lacy and white, curling into the shape of a crescent moon, sprinkled with small pink and yellow diamonds.

His mask was one of the more extravagant in the room, something Quynh no doubt planned on purpose, when he walked in on her arm, as a few party attendees looked his way. 

He realized that it was not just Andromache’s court in attendance, but what he assumed were the subjects of the new River god. These attendees walked around in gowns a rich-clay colored brown, masks stitched in designs of cattails and herons mid-flight, their skin dark and smooth as stone. They seemed  _ younger,  _ somehow, more skittish, unsure yet of their place in the gods complicated hierarchy. 

Nicky was studiously ignoring the dancers in gold and white, bright and light as air, all too familiar from that palace of sun and stone all those years ago. Them, he could not forget. 

Quynh led him past the dancefloor, of which he was grateful, to an offshoot room full of tables and tables of food. A whole roasted boar stuffed with apples and spiced nuts, fish done two dozen ways, sweet oysters and mussels, fried plantain and potato cakes, and more sweet cakes and candies than he’s ever seen before.

“Nile!” Quynh shouted over the din. “Come! And bring Andromache away from the cider please, she should be pacing herself.”

Out from the crowd came a woman in a green silk gown, flowing over the floor like water, her mask was made up in a curtain of emerald and aquamarine, patterned as a wave. She looked like one of the river people he’s spotted on the dance floor, but  _ more.  _ Beautiful, powerful, her eyes exuded the youth of a newly made god.

Andromache was behind her in a beige and maroon suit with a plunging neckline, a stone pendant hanging between her breasts, grinning and sipping from a glass of amber liquid.

Nile extended her hand outwards, a warm, welcoming smile on her face. “You must be the Moon,” she said as he kissed the top of her hand.

“Her son,” he corrected.

She cocked her head, confused. “Your presence says otherwise.”

“Even her nightly duties cannot be set aside for a party,” Nicky said, trying not to sound defensive. “As entertaining as it may be.”

“I’m surprised she let you come,” Andromache muttered over the rim of her glass. The mask she was wearing, bronze with twin stallions rearing up around the corners of her eyes, only enhanced her lethality, her savagery. 

“Andromache,” Quynh scolded, voice low.

“What? He’s no fool, he knows what we’re all thinking.” Downing the rest of the drink she placed the glass on a passing tray and waved them all off. “That’s all I’ll say of it tonight. This is a celebration after all.”

She clapped her hands on Nile’s shoulders and shoved her in Nicky’s direction. “Take our newly found Nile for a dance, Nicolo.” She shot a drunken smile Quynh’s way, though there was something in it that indicated hesitance. “Quynh, you and I need another drink.”

Quynh smiled back at her, and Andromache relaxed. “Better me than anyone else, you’d drink them into a stupor.”

“I don’t know how to dance,” Nicky protested to them, even as Andromache and Quynh were already moving away. 

“Neither do I, we can learn together,” Nile said. 

Nicky wasn’t going to refuse the party’s recipient a dance, and he suspected that Nile was humoring him, especially when she proved to easily swing herself into the fray of the dancers. 

Nile was a cooling presence. Where Andromache was hard, and unwavering, Quynh’s moods swayed as violently as the seas she commanded, Nile wavered in between, easy to speak with, but more than capable of standing on her own. He could see the raw power in her already.

It was not long before Quynh and Andromache joined them amongst the throng of dancers about the floor. Nicolo was shuffled between them with barely a moment’s pause for breath, he even shared a dance or two with Booker who popped in and out of the party with dizzying speed.

He’d been dancing for  _ hours;  _ he had no idea of the time, the hour. His feet ached, but it was a good feeling. He was moving through an enthusiastic jig-like dance with Quynh that required the changing of partners.

Quynh, whose head was thrown back in laughter, twirled him back into the step sequence and into a set of strong arms. 

“About time we stood face to face, don’t you think, Nicolo?” came Yusuf al-Kaysani’s voice from behind a marble mask, cracked in veins of gold, a sun perched between the brows, rays of light extending from the edges to cover the sides of his hair. But Nicky knew it was him, he  _ knew,  _ the mask hid the face but not the eyes.

He had his mother’s eyes.

Nicky placed his hand gingerly on Joe’s shoulder. He was wearing a robed ensemble, colored cream and plaited in yarrow-yellow, shimmering as if he’d stitched it with his own fingers, his own blood. It was the softest thing Nicky had ever felt. He had an overwhelming urge to lean in further and touch Joe’s shoulder with his cheek but he refrained, leaning away to fall back into the dance. 

“Why? Did you have something in particular to share with me?” Nicky asked. Joe seemed similarly preoccupied with sizing up Nicky’s appearance. 

“I thought you would be more receptive to my advances after our last conversation,” Joe said, easy as breathing, like his voice alone wasn’t setting fire to Nicky’s bones.

Nicky huffed. “Why are you here? I assumed your mother would be in attendance.”

Joe frowned. “She has her duties. I have mine. Are you not happy to see me?”

Yes. No. Desperately so. Nicky scoffed in answer. “Did you expect me to be jumping for joy? Come running to your doorstep at the first thought of you?” 

“No,” Joe conceded, his hand tightened on Nicky’s lower back as he twirled him in time with the music, holding him steady. “The field maybe.”

Nicky couldn’t hold in his tiny gasp of surprise. These were things he’d resigned to the past. He wouldn’t have brought it up. He’d never imagined Joe would dare bring it to light. “You remember that?”

“How could I forget?” Joe actually looked hurt that Nicky would think so. “I wished we had more time back then, to meet again.”

The foolish things Nicky would have done should they have met again, young and intoxicated with his invulnerability. He was glad they did not.

“We are together now,” Nicky said. The dance was winding down into its final steps. Joe led him into an outstretched spin and pulled him back in close to end. Applause broke out across the ballroom, the dancers separating, but Joe didn’t let go of his hand.

“Do not leave,” Joe pleaded. He must be able to see the panic in Nicky’s eyes, trapped as an animal would be, unsure of intentions but with the feeling of being hunted _.  _

Nicky did not know what Joe  _ wanted.  _

He knew what his mother would say about this. To bite back, to tear his hand from Joe’s gentle palm and march out of Andromache’s home with war on his tongue, return her on a silver platter. He knew what Quynh would want, to take this offered hand of friendship. 

He was not all-powerful, and he was not all-solitary. He was not the kind of god to govern alone in his high tower.

And Joe was so  _ warm. _

Nicky did not let go. Instead, he nodded, and Joe might have blinded them all for the brightness of his smile. 

~

Nicky supposed that Andomache’s pasture above was a place of comfort for the goddess. It was unapologetically Earth, smelling of grass, the spring-rain of emerging seeds, horse-flesh, the cricketing of insects buried in soil. 

Nicky brightened himself as they walked, just the slightest glow to light their path. His mother must not be feeling particularly indulgent tonight, the sky was cloudy and bursting with the feeling of heavy, restrained rain. There was little light from the moon.

But there was from him, and Joe watched with an amazed curiosity.

“Could you always do that?” he asked.

“Yes,” Nicky said. “As I’ve aged, I’ve gained more control over it.”

Joe laughed, full-throated. “I wish I could have seen it before. You, bright as can be.”

Nicky ducked his head, hiding a smirk, and, without warning,  _ pulsed  _ as bright as he could. Which would not have been wise in the presence of a mortal man, they would no doubt be blinded, but Joe just jumped back with an undignified yelp.

Nicky knew how he looked at his peak. His skin turned almost… crystalline. Shimmering in streams of topaz and moonstone, a million different shades of white dotting about his arms and legs, his face a swirl of pearl. 

A god-form, and while it took much energy, he found himself eager to show Joe his.

“You... “ Joe trailed off, at a loss for words. He paused for so long Nicky dimmed back somewhat, unsure of his welcome. 

“No! No!” Joe protested, waving his hands about and returning quickly to Nicky’s side. He took Nicky’s hands in his own, rubbing over the knuckles, marbled white. “Stay as you are. I have never seen another such as you.”

“There is only one of me in the world,” Nicky said. 

_ There is only one of you. _

“I would have it no other way,” Joe breathed, reverent. He was so very close, studying every curve, every facet of light Nicky emitted. 

“Nicolo, I would see you again. Without the excuses to draw us together.”

“For what purpose?”

“Do I need one?”

There should be a reason. There was always a reason between the gods. A scheme to plot, a line to lay. A book to hide. 

Still, Nicky found that he didn’t care for an answer.

“I suppose not,” he admitted.

“Nicky, we are two sides of the same coin,” Joe held Nicky’s cupped hands between his own, precious, like he was holding an egg and scared of dropping it. “No matter what we may have been told, I believe we are meant to be together.”

“Yusuf…” Nicky was sure his skin flickered nervously. He took in a deep breath, dimming his light. He would not tempt fate. “You speak with such certainty. We barely know one another.”

“Then let’s fix that.” Joe finally stepped away, dropping Nicky’s hands. Nicky wanted to call him back, yet thank him for the kindness of his departure. 

“I would not push you, Nicolo. I apologize if it feels that I have done such. All I ask is the chance, to know you, to learn from each other.” 

Joe looked to the sky, a dark, bruising blue, lightening at the edges. “I must go. But tomorrow morning, meet me at our field.” He reached behind his head, tugging at the ties of his mask and, for the first time this evening, Nicky saw the whole of his face, beautiful as it had always been.

“Please,” he said and walked off, leaving Nicky behind.

~

Nicky would have liked to sleep the day away. But his mother had other plans.

He rode back to the estate, the sky a watery blue, exhausted but exhilarated. Joe’s face behind the mask on Nicky’s mind, his strong hand on Nicky’s back, how he looked desperate and pleading with the long grass brushing up against his knees. 

“You changed,” his mother declared from the hallway once he’d walked inside, shadowed beneath the doorway of his bedroom.

“Your clothes, they’re different,” she continued when he didn’t answer.

“My choice of attire wasn’t appropriate,” he said, stopping before her. She gave no indication of moving, blocking his way into the bedroom. 

“Oh, so it was a peacocking kind of party,” she said, brushing a hand over his chest, studying the fabric. He felt pinned. By someone who picked the wings off of butterflies.

“Do not all gods strut about when they are born?”

“Only those who are deserving,” she said, raising a hand to his cheek, pushing a thumb hard underneath his eye, tilting his head back just a little. 

He was definitely pinned now.

“And what did you think of the River goddess, Nicolo?”

_ I think she is kind. Powerful. Beautiful, as she should be. I hope she grows and learns and nurtures herself under Andromache’s tutelage. I hope Quynh teaches her to be brave, like she tried to teach me. I hope that this time, it sticks. _

“She will not cause trouble,” is what he says. “She is too young, she barely knows how to walk, let alone dance.” 

His mother’s fingernails dug into his skin. “The young are not always so clueless for long.”

Nicky took in a measured inhale. “Then we will deal with her, should she overstep.”

The Moon took her hand away. It took everything Nicky had in him not to slump forward in relief, he was sure she could hear his heartbeat, thumping far harder than he wished. 

“Sleep,” she said to him, finally moving out of the doorway. “You will be working tomorrow.”

Then she was gone, and Nicky pulled himself into his room and shut the door before he sank to the ground with a gasp, tucking his head between his knees.

He was supposed to meet  _ Yusuf  _ at dawn. Only an hour ago he was intent on doing so. His curiosity peaked, about the golden boy in the flowers that haunted his childhood memories. Now made a man, now made a god. 

How quickly his mother undid such joy. 

She would find out if he went. Whether it was today or tomorrow or a year from now she would know. She still posted  _ guards  _ on the edge of the forest border. 

But that was the thing wasn’t it. The Stella didn’t care, not anymore. They obeyed Cometa, who obeyed him. It had been years, since his mother took direct command over them. Nicky was growing, Nicky was changing, Nicky was becoming his  _ own. _

It would not be long before she was exhausted of her power.

(This was both unthinkable and undeniable. In the aftershock of the River party, where Nicky danced and laughed and basked in the  _ newness  _ of Nile. A new god. He now knew, for sure, that all things ended.

Could his mother die? Has a god ever done so?

No matter how weak the Moon became, in her scramble for remaining authority, he did not think she could.)

It was the wiser thing to stay home. To sink into his bed and fall into sleep, go about his nightly duties, ignore the call of this wild, dangerous meeting.

That was smarter.

Nicky picked himself off of the floor and climbed into bed, shaking.

He did not sleep. When the moon rose and the stars called he attended to his duties. 

Then, exhausted, he slipped into the forest and followed the lavender light of a waning night to the far edge of the forest. Dawn before him, home, a distant figure.

~

Nicky, of course, knew the ins and outs of the forest better than any guards that were posted there. 

And so he was able to sneak past the few guards on their patrol, slipping between the glow of their star-lights, hidden by the undergrowth. It was getting lighter out, and soon the shadows would do little to conceal him.

But he made it to the field, unseen, without interruption, and found himself alone with the flowers.

Some of them had curled-in petals from the night, cold and tinged with dew. Nicky wanted to brush them free of it, but he knew he would only make them colder. Few flowers blossomed under moonlight.

He didn’t have to ruminate in that thought for long, just as the sky edged out into a soft streaked dawn, barely blue, there was a rustle from across the clearing and Joe stepped out from the trees.

He was in a simple warrior’s garb, gold and white, with his scimitar hung at his hip. He looked at Nicky like a wonder, like he didn’t expect him to be there.

Nicky couldn’t blame him.

“You’re here,” Joe said, breathless, but Nicky could hear him clean across the field. It was as if he was tuned into every movement, every sound the man made. 

“You asked,” Nicky said, swallowing down his nerves.

“Yes, I did.” Joe nodded, reassuring himself. He took a few cautious steps forward, further into the wildflowers, watching Nicky for any signs of hesitance. A spooked horse. A skittish deer. Something to court.

He laughed, self-conscious. “A part of me, larger than I’d care to admit, did not think we would get this far. That the bridge our mothers burned could not be repaired.”

Nicky flinched, and couldn’t hide it. Joe’s eyes widened slightly, watching him. 

“Maybe there is a good reason it should remain so,” Nicky said.

“Is that really what you think?” Joe asked, curious. 

No, he was just being bitter. Even now, Nicky could not chase away the defensiveness he’d ingrained in himself for so long. Wary, and toothed, ready to bite off at the first sign of danger. But Joe wasn’t here to fight, at least not in a way that would wound.

(Nicky wanted to fight him. To twirl with him in the reeds, the dust, an arena of their own making and hear the clanging of swords. He wondered what it would be like to pierce his skin. Just a cut, on the shoulder, the arm.

Would he bleed the same as Nicky did? Would he bleed at all? Would he let Nicky wrap him up with tender hands. 

Joe would let the enemy close, if only to study him, if only to know him better, and sweep him away.

Nicky was willing to be swept away.)

“I think there are things we don’t know about each other, that are dangerous,” Nicky said. “This isn’t done.” He gestured to the distance between them, how they’d managed to keep speaking in some kind of peace. 

The last few strides between them were a barrier. He needed this physical reminder of how  _ wrong  _ this was. Meeting Joe here in the light between their lives.

Joe walked further into the field of flowers. When his hands brushed the petals they curled into him as worshipers would, kissing at his skin for warmth, for light and the greed of the sun’s brilliance. The dew hissed away into the air. Then they were only a length apart. 

“I think it’s about time we reevaluate what’s done _ ,”  _ Joe declared. He held out his palm, skin a lovely brown, and Nicky swore he could see the blood in his veins, leaking gold. 

“How about we do what we  _ want?”  _

Oh what sweet seduction, what dashing defiance.

He took Joe’s hand, and the sky above them burst into color. 

It was like dripping blood, in a thousand different colors. Carnation pink, feather-light lavender, yellow like warm desert stones, a few last lingering streaks of midnight blue receding against the horizon. Joe moved his hand up Nicky’s forearm, and though he was not touching skin, the brush over cloth had Nicky’s skin tingling. When he breathed out, more shaky than he cared for, the rest of the darkness in the sky faded away, and then they were both awash in daylight.

“Huh,” Joe said staring up at the sky, a wide grin split across his face that only made him more handsome, more interesting to look at.

“I would like to paint this,” he said. He took his hand away and hummed, contentedly, when the colors stayed. 

“You paint?”

“Yes. In another life I like to think I would have been an artist,” Joe said, whimsically. “Sadly, I do not have the materials here today to capture this sight.”

“This dawn will be gone soon,” Nicky said.

“Yes.” Joe drew out his sword with a flourish. He twisted the hilt to watch the sunlight gleam off the metal. It was shined and polished to perfection. “But I think we can make another one of similar beauty, can’t we, Nicolo?”

More visits. More of… whatever these were. Would Nicky deny Joe this?

(Would he deny himself?)

He spared a glance for the painter’s canvas the sky had become. Never in his life had he seen a dawn so vibrant and beautiful.

Nicky took out his sword, two-handed, and held it out in the starting position for a spar. 

“I think we can make a better one,” he said and lunged forward.

~

Cometa’s lessons had grown less frequent over the years. Like with Quynh, there was less and less that she could teach him outright. But every week Nicky managed to carve out a few hours of his time for her in the library, to read and converse, and dedicated time to the mind, rather than running the household.

He found that he couldn’t keep his eyes open today, jarring awake with his nose flush to the page of a book and blinking back into awareness.

He started to apologize, for what must have been the third time tonight, but Cometa just reached over and plucked the book from his hands.

“You’re not sleeping,” she said.

“I am!” he protested. And he was, a few hours, here and there, after he snuck back into the castle in the later hours of the morning. 

And those were the days he managed to tear himself away from Joe on  _ time _ . He found those days becoming fewer and farther between. 

He’d never met a person so  _ attuned  _ to himself before. Different, but somehow Joe understood him. 

Nicky admitted to himself, somewhat shamefully, that despite Joe's best efforts, their initial meetings at dawn involved more clashing of steel than any real conversation.

Nicky could have lived on their sword fights  _ alone.  _ It was like nothing he’d ever encountered.

Sure, he’d spent time when he’d come of age sparring with the swordmaster at his estate. And then his mother, who demanded nothing but perfection of him. Pushing his forms long into the daylight until he was gasping and panting, emptying his stomach onto the floor. 

But this wasn’t pushing beyond a barrier, fighting until he dropped. It was hard and playful. Nicky fought to the best of his ability with Joe, and he quickly realized that Joe was one of the finer swordsmen he had ever met. Joe could match him, if not beat him.

They spent hours in a circle of grass that Joe had so graciously cut down for them on the first day after Nicky had tripped on a clump of patched sod three times in a row, falling flat on his face, and Joe took pity on him. 

In the beginning, Nicky had been intent on fighting honorably, but Joe had no such intentions. A feint to the belly, a knee just shy of the groin, a sweep of the leg that toppled Nicky over, taking the breath out of him. Ending with the curved edge of a scimitar at his throat, a wickedly grinning Joe panting above him.

It was a very dirty way to play.

He was perturbed by Joe’s lack of honor in fighting, and told him as much. 

All Joe had said was, “In love and war there is no honor, Nicolo, I would not have you fall prey to the pretenses of either.”

Nicky hadn’t known how to respond, so he had shoved his longsword Joe’s way to shut him up. Joe didn’t seem to mind, his face a permanent smile after they’d finished and Nicky didn’t immediately leave after they’d cleaned up. Joe sketched for a while, he hadn’t brought any paints like he said he might the first time, and when Nicky craned his neck over to look, Joe snapped the notebook shut. 

After that Joe plucked a piece of long grass and blew air through his cupped hands in a whistle just to piss Nicky off.

All their visits after that were more evenly matched. Less fighting, more talking. Nicky’s never had someone his own age to talk to before who wasn’t a servant. 

He was enjoying it, meeting with Joe two to three times a week. Clearly it was becoming noticeable.

“You are distracted,” Cometa said to him, packing up the books on their table and going to properly put them away on the shelves.

“I’m running a household, of course I’m distracted,” Nicky protested.

“No,  _ I’m  _ doing most of that Nicolo, in case you’ve forgotten where my duties lie while you’ve been disappearing off into the dawnlight to meet the Sun’s heir.”

Nicky froze. And here it was. It had only been a few weeks, and he’d been found out. If Cometa knew, then surely someone else did as well.  _ His mother.  _ She’d hang it over his head, a taunt, a mouse caught by the tail to be played with before swallowed. Or worse, she’d march him and the rest of their guard to the desert palace, and lay waste to it all.

She’d tear him apart if she knew how close Joe got to him when they fought. 

“Nico.” He jumped back at the soft voice, and a gentle hand over his knuckles. He’d been clenching them without even noticing, white and stiff against the desktop.

“I won’t tell her,” Cometa said. 

“Truly?” He hated how weak he sounded, how childish. All of a sudden he was so  _ afraid  _ to lose this. The small companionship he’d carved out for himself, through no small feat, as taboo as it might be.

“Yes,” Cometa said firmly. “It is a good thing, what you are doing, and fun I might add. You are young Nico, and you will be for a very long time. Making a friend is not the worst thing in the world to happen to you.”

“This friend maybe,” he whispered.

She shook her head. “Yusuf is the best that you could ask for.”

He was. Nicky barely knew him, and this was already easy to see. Water is wet. Grass is green. Yusuf al-Kaysani was a good man, the best anyone could ever ask for. 

“I want… I want to keep seeing him, Cometa,” he admitted. “I do not want to stop.” He stood up, pushing the chair back with a loud groan against the floor. He walked to the sitting area by the fireplace, waving his hands about as he spoke.

“He’s teaching me things! We spar and we talk. He sits with me when I want quiet. He doesn’t force  _ anything  _ on me. I can just exist around him if I like, and I can leave if I want. It’s so easy.”

Cometa had her hands over her mouth, her eyes crinkled up and glistening with tears. He ran to her, concerned, but she swatted him away, sniffling.

“I’m alright, I’m alright.” She wiped her eyes and cleared her throat. “It is just… I cannot remember the last time I have seen you happy.”

“I don’t feel happy,” he said, which was only partly a lie. He was more worried, anxious than anything else. There was this constant compulsive need to look over his shoulder. He was itching with nerves. But recalling the moments in the flower field, he was happy when he was with Joe. He was happier there more than any other time in his life. 

“You’re scared, and unsure,” Cometa said, getting right to the point. “Those feelings come with love.”

_ Love. _

_ Love? _

Nicky was not in  _ love.  _ He wasn’t sure he was even capable of being in love. The gods did not operate in facets of feeling. That was better left for the mortals, who fought and died over something so fleeting as love. One could never be sure of love, how many times has he seen the girls in his mother’s temples with blessings and praise for their intended, only to be cast aside in favor of a more beautiful maiden. How many times have men laid their promised rings at the altar in an offering, discarded after a marriage gone sour. 

Love, he wanted to laugh, he had no use for love.

(What he did think of, or at least told himself he didn’t, was the midnight dalliances he came across in the forest, the sweet symphony of couples caught up against trees, laughing into each other's mouths. Their heads pillowed on each other's chests after their needs were sated, running soft fingers through hair, leaving kisses everywhere they could reach. Whispering at the stars and the moon, and comparing one another to their beauty.

Would Joe have something similar to say to him? What could Nicky be compared to? What kind of poems would he inspire?)

“You’re a fool,” he said, voice low and cold. It was cruel to say, and cruelly meant, but it was what he did. What his mother taught him. 

_ Backed into a corner with the things I do not want to confess, I would bite my way out, bloody, and answer not to the wounds I deal and hearts I break. Gods are made of stiffer stuff, I will survive. _

“What do you know of the gods and love? There is no such thing.” 

(That was a lie too, they both knew it. There was a book in this very room that proved it.)

He stormed out, and though he did not slam the door, the room was darker, all the candles left blown out.

~

“Do you have other friends?” Nicky asked Joe two days later during their ritual cool-down from sparring.

“Do I seem very antisocial to you, Nicolo?” he jested, fiddling with one of the straps on his boots that had come undone in their fight. He was sweating; about two months into their little charade and they’d gotten very good at pushing one another to their limits. But it was less aggressive now, less like they had something to prove, Nicky was laughing through his sword strokes more times than he gritted his teeth.

“No,” Nicky mumbled, regretting his question. But he couldn’t take it back, Joe was watching him, curious.

“I feel… some days as if we are the only ones in the world,” he said. “I don’t speak with many others.”

Joe nodded, leaning back into the yellowing grass. The season was turning to autumn, and the air grew crisper with each passing day. Yesterday he’d gone to Cometa’s room with a basket of freshly picked apples he bought from one of the orchard men in the nearest village as a peace offering.

(And wasn’t that a strange experience, bartering with a human man, Nicky was sure he’d been swindled on the price.)

She accepted them only once he mumbled his way through an appropriate apology. Then kissed his head and promised to bring some of the apples to the cook to make turnovers with. The other half she kept for herself, they were her favorite after all. 

Nicky wondered if the season here bothered Joe, who spent most of his days in the constant beatdown of desert heat. There was no foliage there, no incoming chill, just sun and sand and people of golden skin and smiles.

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. Talk, make friends, I mean,” Joe said at Nicky’s confusion.

“I may have forced my own tendencies upon you.”

“You didn’t,” Nicky said smiling to himself. He’d settled into the grass at Joe’s side and was fiddling with a few strands he’d plucked out of the ground. They were dry, hungry for rain. 

“I am happy to be friends with you, though I may have been reluctant early on,” Nicky said.

“Reluctant?” Joe was laughing, warm and full-belied. “You looked at me like I was something you picked up off the forest floor.”

It stung a little to hear, but Joe stated fact. Nicky had been far from welcoming, socially inept, and more prone to sticking his nose up at Joe than engaging in polite conversation. 

“Ah, Nicolo,” Joe said, bumping their shoulders together. “You look sick, please, I have forgiven you for any past hostilities. Is that not why we’re here? To bury that pesky hatchet, and start anew.”

“Is it?” Nicky asked. “We’ve done little but spar and gossip like old ladies.”

“There are other things I could show you,” Joe said.

Joe pushed himself out of the grass, shedding his upper-layered jacket and throwing it to the ground. He was in his undershirt then, tan, dipping low at his neck to show off his collarbones and the top of his chest where some hair peeked out.

Nicky kept his eyes  firmly  on Joe’s face.

(Which, in all honesty, was just as distracting.)

“You showed me your god-form, Nicolo. It is only fair that I return a similar intimacy.”

Nicky's moonlit skin was something he bestowed on very few, he would not ask Joe to extend the same invitation just to even the scale. But before Nicky could protest or agree, Joe tipped  his head up to the burgeoning sunrise. He held his hands out and summoned  _ fire  _ into them.

Nicky stood up, panicked and rushed forward in some foolish instinct to whoosh the flame away, how, he did not know, but Joe was smiling, holding the flame in his palm. He tossed his hand up and the fire  _ bounced  _ like he was tossing an orange, juggling with it.

“How…?” Nicky whispered, circling around where Joe held the flickering flame out. 

“It is not something my mother can do,” Joe said, taking his other hand and  _ stretching  _ the flame between his fingers like one would pull a long piece of string. The bottom of the flame dripped and bubbled in sparks but somehow Joe was keeping them from falling to the ground, circling them back instead into the fire, away from the dry grass that would no doubt set the whole clearing aflame. 

“The room that was once my nursery has a few extra coats of paint on it, to hide singe marks,” Joe said. “I am told that I sneezed fire when I was about nine months old or so, and scared the life out of my nursemaid.”

“You manage it so well, though.” Nicky wanted to reach out and touch it, foolish, but in Joe’s hands the fire looked comforting, like something living in his hand, tamed and purred to contentment.

“It’s taken years of practice, Andromache helped. My mother too, though her skills lay elsewhere.” Joe snapped his fingers and the flame snuffed out in a trail of white smoke. He gave a little bow, like a street performer, and Nicky clapped for him.

“Quynh was your teacher, no?” Joe asked.

“She was, I can control some of her domain. Seawater. But I do not think I could work with Nile on that front. My mother too—” 

_ Darker dawn’s in the sparring room, heaving on his knees, his mother screaming in his ear. The taste of coins in his mouth, silver blood dripping from his tongue and onto the training floor.  _

“She taught me many things,” Nicky trailed off, for a lack of anything better to say. 

Joe, wisely, didn’t prod for more details. Nicky was opening up, bit by bit, but it was slow. One of the late buds in spring, the last flower to be bloomed and not to be rushed.

“We can learn more from each other now, than I think we can from our elders,” Joe said. “They do not know everything.”

“They act like it.”

Joe snorted. “They’re obnoxious.” He raised his head to the sky, one hand on his hip.

“The Sun is high, it is almost time to go,” he said.

“Yes,” said Nicky, his head resting atop his knees. He didn’t want to go back home. Sneaking into his bedroom, to lay in his bed, too wired to sleep, too worried to do anything. Another, sleepless day to hide away with makeup, rubbing paint over the circles under his eyes before meetings with his mother. 

“I could show you a few more tricks?” Joe asked, drawing out the words. He wasn’t looking at Nicky directly, but out of the corner of his eye, his body tilted towards his companion  _ just  _ so. Like he was bracing himself for rejection, a parody of nonchalance. But Joe, Nicky was learning, was not good at hiding his emotions.

Maybe Nicky could teach him.

“Okay,” Nicky said, more to himself than to Joe. He accepted Joe’s hand when offered to draw him in closer and long after Joe had let go to burst his palm again into flame, Nicky’s hand tickled with warmth, a fire left behind.

~ 

Nicky and Joe were not discovered. But their meetings came to an abrupt stop.

The celestials, it seems, were on the brink of war.

It started with a border dispute that, to no one’s surprise, was initiated by his mother.

If she were asked, she’d place blame on Nile and Andromache. And thus, the al-Kaysani’s were to blame as well. Everything was connected with her.

Alliances between gods were strange. They were fickle things, changing every season, changing every minute. If the wind blew wrong, then damn on Booker. If the water was foul then curse Nile. If mountains were too high, the forest too dark, then Andromache was having a few bad decades. They were not mortals, squabbling over every petty little thing, but sometimes Nicky did think they shared more characteristics with them than everyone thought, or would like to admit. 

Booker served usually as a middle-man. He traveled as he pleased, his allegiances were useful at best and fleeting at worst, as was in his nature. He found it difficult to take root with any greater god. With all the wild inclinations and fragile tempers of the gods Nicky knew, he truly could not blame him.

One evening, well into autumn, Booker blew into the lunar palace, with a tight look on his face, harsher than his usual scowl.

Nicky had never seen Booker walk so fast, he was lucky enough to have been coming out of the library and into the hallway, blocking off Booker’s path to his mother’s throne room. 

Cometa, who was trailing behind Booker, chattering angrily, trying to tug him back the way they came, heaved an audible sigh of relief upon seeing Nicolo.

“Tell him,” she said to Booker between breaths, throwing her hands out. 

“I should be telling his mother,” Booker grumbled.

Cometa  _ growled.  _ Angrily. It was a rare sight to see his tutor truly frustrated, she had a master’s kind of patience. 

“Tell. Him. First.” She had a hand clenched on Booker’s sleeve. He’d be lucky if all she left was a bruise.

Booker sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Fine,” he said, pushing Cometa off.

“It’s Nile,” he said. “She’s moving the border.”

It took a second for Nicky to understand. 

“The border… the meadow border? Is she mad?” Nicky spluttered.

Booker shook his head. He looked about as confused as Nicky felt. “It’s in her nature. She’s guiding a new river path. She said there was already a source in the woods, that it was simply a matter of time.”

Okay, okay. He could explain this. His mother was stubborn but not stupid. She was older than Nile, older than many of the gods here. She knew of their natures well, the pull of the moon, the call of the skies, how the water would sometimes speak to them in tongues they could not put to paper.

Then Booker said, “Andromache is there too.”

Oh. Nicky wanted to laugh. Or cry. There was the problem. The reason for Cometa’s hesitancy. There would be no swaying his mother when she knew that Andromache was helping, with a border change no less. 

Cometa’s face was drawn, she’d given up already. 

“Come,” Nicky said. “There’s nothing to do then but to tell her.”

Walking into the throne room Nicky put himself first at the head of their party. He would pass on the message, he would bear the brunt of whatever resulted from it.

It was his responsibility.

The moon had just risen, and it was early in the night. His mother, still occasionally headed the nightly roundabouts, a day or two a week while Nicky did the rest. She was being outfitted by the Stella, already strapped into her armor, gleaming in black. A servant was tying the laces of her gauntlets together. She looked as fierce in it as she always did, no matter how strained she looked about the face these days, old. But dignified still.

Deadly.

“I’m on duty tonight, Nicolo, if you don’t remember,” she drawled, without looking up. 

“It can wait,” Nicky said coming to a stop. Planting his feet firmly apart, his hands crossed and low, a battle stance. Hard to uproot. Difficult to shake. 

She looked at him. Her face was impassive as it usually was, little emotion, but her eyes had focused in on him. Her interest was piqued.

“Well for what? Go on then,” she said.

“Nile is at the border,” Nicky said slowly, trying to see anything,  _ anything,  _ in her face that would give away what she was thinking. “She is making a new river. Andromache is with her.”

The Stella who had been strapping on his mother’s gauntlets went very still, they eyed his mother’s arm like it had suddenly grown teeth, pulling their fingers away from the strings.

But his mother put a hand on their shoulder, holding them in place. The fabric of their shirt bunched up under her hand. It looked like it hurt.

“At the border, Nicolo?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“How do you know this?”

“Booker came to tell us,” he said.

“Did Andromache send him?”

“No,” Booker answered for himself.

She considered this. A hand still on the shoulder of the Stella. Her nails had pierced the cloth, and Nicky could see blood. Yet, the Stella did not move. 

“Sebastien, get out,” she said. “Take Cometa with you. Tell the stables to ready the regiments' horses.”

“I do not work for you,” Booker said, a windstorm in his voice. Nicky wanted to hit him for the slip of tongue. Yet a small part of himself was a little proud.

“You do now, if I see you on the other side of the battlefield I’ll gut you clean and leave you for the buzzards.” She released her hand from the Stella’s shoulder. They did nothing but sway, only for the slightest of seconds. Then return to tightening the straps, blooding dripping from their shoulder onto the floor.

“Now go,” his mother said.

Booker seemed inclined to stay glaring at her, there was a perceptible scent of something cold and biting brewing in the room, but Cometa was pulling him towards the door.

Then it was just them.

“You would have war, Mother?” he asked.

“I would protect what is mine,” she said. The Stella finished with her gauntlets and she shooed them off, already guards were coming in from the doors. Armored and readied. A few servants walked in, with what looked like his own battle armor. 

A Stella handed Lady di Genova her battle helm. Black, stamped with the phases of the moon across the visor. 

“Is the river water yours to command, Mother?” He was prodding. If they were off to battle anyway, what did it matter what domain she commanded. They all knew that she didn’t. 

“No,” she said, slipping the helmet on. “But I don’t care.”

~

Booker warned Nile and Andromache that they were coming, Nicky was sure. Somehow. The man had his methods, commands of the winds and other channels of communication Nicky would never be privy to. He was grateful, but it only made his mother angrier.

It took very little time at all for his mother’s battle party to be ready. Outfitted with her armor, a black horror, Nicky in his own distinct silver. His helmet stamped with a crescent moon above the forehead. A cross of stars over his chest, beneath the wings of an owl. 

They met Cometa, and a stone-faced Booker, who were saddled and ready. His mother mounted her stallion, Nicky his old but trusted palomino, and rode off into the forest with a hundred or so Stella behind them. 

His mother did not stop, kept their riding at a brutal pace, pushing through the brush with the night bleeding out behind them. It was coming on to dawn, the very bare breath of it, one Nicky had become so familiar with. 

Not before long they burst into the clearing where Nile, on the far end of the autumn crisped wildflowers, was standing knee-deep in the froth of a new river, thick and deep but not wide, already flowing from the field down south through a thatch of trees. 

She had no armor on, only a long gray dress, dampened by the river. Her hair tied up high in a long bunch of intricate braids. She eyed their emergence from the treeline over her shoulder, and did not seem concerned.

“Child!” his mother shouted. She held a hand up to hold the rest of her party back. Nicky pulled at his horse, who snorted with nerves, and stilled his own best he could watching his mother canter over to the riverbank, her sword already drawn.

“Remove yourself from this land,” his mother demanded. 

“I am doing my job, Lady di Genova,” Nile said, and with a motion of her hand a section of the bank collapsed in just beyond the hooves of his mother’s stallion, it reared, spooked, and his mother had to backpedal or risk being thrown off the horse. 

“I suggest you do yours.”

“You know  _ nothing  _ of what my duties are,” his mother spat from her horse, turning in tight little circles. 

“I do,” came a voice from the other side of the river.

There was a great sound of movement and fifty or so riders came out from the forest, all of them colored in the gemstones of Andromache’s court. The rainbow collection of dancers Nicky remembered from the ball, only saddled and wrought in iron and leather. Armed with bows and axes. 

Andromache stood without her mount at the front. She continued down until her horse was even with Nile in the water. The speed of the current was kicking up, rushing past their legs in an angry gurgle. 

“ _You have_ _no right, Andromache,_ ” his mother snarled. She lifted her hand to signal Nicky and the guard. Nicky swallowed and in turn led them forward, stopping just a few lengths beyond the river.

“You meddle in matters not of your own,” Lady di Genova said. “Bringing this young pup to my door, barely formed.”

“Nile goes where she is needed, as well all do. We are gods to our natures, as you know. You underestimate her, and my patience,” Andromache said. She reached behind her shoulder to pull out the labrys strapped to her back, it zinged in the early dawn-light, just bright enough now to illuminate, everyone coming into solid shape.

His mother laughed, loud, echoing around the clearing like a long cold curl of smoke. 

“Patience. Dear Andromache, you know I have none.” Lady di Genova clinked down the visor of her helm and charged forward.

The Moon thundered through the water, kicking up ripples into the air, with her sword raised outwards to pierce and strike. Andromache whistled loudly, and before Nicky’s mother could come close to her mark, from the sides of the river came the galloping sound of distant hooves.

Nicky watched as they were swarmed, by Yusuf al-Kaysani, the Sun’s soldiers, and his mother, the lady of light. 

~

Fighting men of the sun, in the dawn, with their powers on the rise was a different kind of savagery than his one-on-ones with Yusuf. There were no soft exchanges between sun rays, the dawn a flirty pink to temper their blushes, Nicky speared a man on the edge of his sword in the first thirty seconds of the fight and shoved his body off his screaming horse, staining the ground black with blood.

He was trying to get to the river, where he’d last seen his mother, a sneer of resigned anger on her face at the coming cavalry, before Nicky was swallowed up by battle. 

But the fighting was thick, there were five hundred of them there at least. From the Sun, the Earth, the Moon. A few stray soldiers of Nile’s, fresh-faced and not yet formed with experience but fighting fiercely. 

Nicky steered his horse through the fray, many had fallen from their mounts and were grappling in the meadow, on the muddied banks of the new river. He fended off the grappling hands of enemy soldiers, seeking to tear him down from his horse. His palomino swerved and bit at anyone who came close. Nicky’s longsword was slick with blood, he left a trail of bodies behind him. 

He was getting closer to the riverbank. Nile was gone, for which he was glad, young as she was, he did not know how she would have fared in the thick of the fighting. He hoped he did not see her because she had gotten away, not because his mother had gotten to her.

He was a horse-length from the water when his palomino shrieked, and Nicky was tossed from the saddle and into the water.

Spluttering, weighted down by the heft of his armor, Nicky tried to rise only to find himself shoved back down.

Someone was drowning him, someone was  _ drowning  _ him.

He kicked and clawed, he’d dropped his sword somewhere in the struggle, lost to the water but he couldn’t lift it properly with one hand anyway. He grabbed instead, for a river stone. 

Just in time, he could feel the water in his teeth, the rush of knife-like cold to his lungs, a second more and his mother would have had to go fishing for his body at the bottom of the river. A hefty rock in hand he swung for the face of the person holding him down, nothing but a faceless mess of darkness beyond the water’s surface. 

Aimed true, there was a burst of blood from above where Nicky hit him, falling into the water and tinting it  _ gold.  _

Nicky rose from the water, scrambling up for firmer ground and found himself face to face with  _ Joe  _ gold dripping from his mouth, his jaw hung down in a way that it did when broken, staring at Nicolo with wide, horror-struck eyes.

_ He was killing me. He was killing me. _

Was Nicky’s heart breaking? Is that what this was? The rapid-flush to his ears, his eyes, all of his senses dialed up to ten thousand. It felt like he was dying. Nicky would explode, and leave nothing behind. Not even a husk, he was not even worth that. Joe did not think he was worth that, pushing him down into the water, to suck his life dry.

“Nicolo—” Yusuf said, or at least he started to, Nicky wasn’t really listening; he was a roar of fury and betrayal. 

(His mother was right, she was always right and Nicky was a  _ fool.  _ Strayed far from the path she’d laid out for him. She had good intentions, pure intentions. Protect the family and protect their ways.

What could Joe offer to him that was not tainted in deceit, and years of hatred? There was no shaking this feud.)

Nicky charged at him, barehanded and knocked Joe into the reeds. He was running on rage and adrenaline. He felt himself duped, tricked, lured into soft promises of sunshine and a curious way of knowing one another intimately. A better friend than he had ever had before in his life.

If Nicky had not been so blinded, maybe he would have noticed the way in which Joe fought back.

The Sun’s heir twisted and turned in time to Nicky’s punches, Nicky grabbed for his face, he blocked. He pushed Nicky away with sure feet and strong arms. But he did not attack. He defended only enough to allow his body some reprieve. 

Joe was not fighting back.

Nicky didn’t notice, or care. He kept coming, and Joe, in his soft-minded state, did not react quickly enough when Nicky reached for the scimitar at his hip, so familiar to him, Nicky knew exactly where to grab for it.

With a sword finally in Nicky’s hand and Joe suddenly defenseless, Joe tried to get his feet underneath him. But his feet were sinking into the tangled mud, thick with weeds and water roots. He fell, and Nicky slashed at him with the stolen scimitar, leaving another gaping gash of gold down one of his legs.

Joe screamed in agony. 

Out on the battlefield, where the tide had turned in favor of the Sun and the rest of their combined armies, Andromache heard Joe cry out and rushed from where she had been locked in combat to the trampled throng of mud and crushed greenery by the riverbed. 

Cometa, who had been in the process of herding the Moon’s guard back, a retreat not far from her tongue, heard it too and followed.

What they would come upon was this.

Nicky, a boot pressed to Joe’s chest, pushing him down into the murky water, with the gold-stained tip of the scimitar held to Joe’s throat. Soft, and tender, covered in blood and dirt.

(Oh what a mockery this was. Many years ago that sword-tip was at Nicky’s throat.)

Nicky was crying, heavily. Great heaving sobs, between spitting words. Neither Andromache nor Cometa understood the tongue in which he spoke, but the meaning behind them was easy enough to comprehend. 

Pain. Betrayal. Love that had not yet faded, but was snarling and trapped and scared. 

Joe, too, was speaking, begging, but not for his life. 

_ I didn’t know, I didn’t know it was you, Nicolo, please. Ya amar, I did not know, I would never, please— _

A horn, from the distance, the high melodic tinny sound of the Moon’s. 

Then from Lady di Genova, “Retreat! Retreat! Forces retreat!”

Joe was staring up at Nicky, panting through his pain. Nicky could end this here. It was what his mother would do.

_ I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t—Nicky I didn’t mean to.  _

Nicky was a riot, his mind raced like shooting stars. He took one step back, mouth parted in an angry horror. 

He dropped the scimitar on the ground and bolted for the forest, Cometa running to his side.

Andromache, who had watched it all, rushed to Joe’s side, where he was struggling to stand, one hand pressed tight to the long, golden, dripping gash on his thigh that Nicky left behind. 

“I almost killed him,” Joe gasped once Andromache had him slung over her shoulder. He could walk, but she would need to get him help quickly, to stop the bleeding. “I almost killed him, Andromache, I didn’t know it was him I  _ swear—” _

“I know, I know,” she reassured him. They were coming into sight of the rest of the fighters now. Andromache saw Lady al-Kaysani, radiant in her rose-gold armor, blood spatters on her cheek, a sword raised to the sky in triumph. But her face shuttered when she saw Joe, and with a couple of soldiers, came running.

“Andromache, what am I going to do? He hates me, he hates me.” Joe continued babbling even as his mother pushed him to lay down, making room for a healer to come and assess his leg. Joe would not let go of her hand, he clung to it like a lifeline.

“What? Yusuf what’s wrong? What’s happening?” Lady al-Kaysani asked, and kept asking, even as Joe slipped into a hazy state, his eyes unfocused and high to the sky where the sun had finally risen, exposing them all to the light. 

_ This is our sins laid bare, my lady. Here are the fruits of our labors. Our greed, our misunderstandings. Your son, struck down by one he would not fight. How did it come to this? Your sons crossing swords, though they love each other still.  _

_ What a fucking mess this is. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come check me out on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/1derspark)!
> 
> And as always comments and kudos are appreciated and feed the beast :)


	5. Interlude 2

Andromache met the love of her life on a rocky beach, where the stones beneath her feet were black as night. They shone and stung the soles of her feet like hot metal on a summer’s day.

Fortunately, she was friends with the Sun goddess, who was kind enough to dim herself for the sake of Andromache’s feet and Lady Di Genova’s pale complexion and sensitive ice-white eyes.

Andromache stumbled across a woman looking half-dead. At first she thought she was a human. Some fool who’d wadded too far out to sea, only to be swept up by a riptide, or a shipwrecked survivor. The body would no doubt have to be disposed of, or it would taint the surrounding area.

But when Andromache bent down to poke at the woman, she got her finger bitten for her trouble.

The woman flopped over onto her back and threw a handful of the small black rocks at Andromache’s face. 

Andromache spluttered, stumbling back, stunned. Behind her, Lady Di Genova was running to catch her in Andromache’s stead.

The woman was weak, from whatever ordeal she’d been through, so it did not take long before the Moon caught up with her. And Lady di Genova moved slowly in the sunlight on a good day.

The woman was slumped down in Lady di Genova’s arms, weight slack, dragging her heels through the sand as the Moon tried to move her.

Eventually she gave up, and threw the woman at Andromache’s feet. Clearly, she was unworried that the woman would escape.

“She’s different,” Lady di Genova said, her jaw clenched and her arms crossed.

“What does that mean?” Andromache asked, looking down at the woman. Her hair hung down over her face in a tangled black riot. What bits of skin she could see were red and pock-marked, cut up, like she’d been tossed violently from the waves.

“It means she’s a god, Andromache!” The Sun was jogging their way, coming to a stop at Andromache’s side, resting an elbow on her shoulder. She was grinning wide and bright at them both, and the newcomer huddled at their feet.

“It has been a long time since we’ve had a new one,” she said cheerfully.

“Looks like you are not the youngest anymore, Andromache,” the Moon said, but she did not look happy. She was eyeing the newcomer intensely.

“What is your name?” Andromache asked the woman, even though the answer may not be so simple. The Sun and Moon did not have names for many centuries. The ones they bore today they’d taken as offerings left by noble families in their temples. Andromache went back and forth with them herself.

“I am Ocean,” the woman rasped after a long beat of silence. She pulled back some of her hair to clear her face. Her eyes were deep, dark pools, hinting of monstrous things, speaking of chasms and drowning and a sense of  _ power.  _

Andromache felt as if she was staring into oblivion, rich and beautiful.

“But,” the Ocean went on. “I think I should like to be called Quynh.”

~

The Ocean goddess was violent and serene in equal measures. Where Andromache operated in stone-cool facets of emotion, Quynh changed by the minute, by the hour. 

She chose to make her home, to no one's surprise, at the bottom of the sea. But she did not show it to any of them. She walked with Andromache and the celestials in their own homes, amongst their own courts, and never spoke of her own.

Andromache asked her if she had one.

“Of course I do,” Quynh said. They were leaning against a pillar in one of the Moon’s temples. Lady di Genova was standing behind a wall of Stella who were accepting offerings in a series of waves from worshipers. Many tried to peek over the shoulders of the stars for a glimpse of the Moon goddess, but she wasn’t interested in being seen. She’d shrouded herself in shadow and was scowling at the ceiling, picking apart the architecture.

“You won’t show us,” Andromache said.

“I don’t have to,” Quynh said simply.

Andromache was less practiced at schooling the hurt from her face then, and Quynh could read her pretty well anyway. Quynh sighed.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she said, and left it at that.

It wasn’t tomorrow and it wasn’t the week after that. Andromache and Quynh spent the next few weeks assisting Cometa with the Moon’s spoils of worship.

Andromache almost forgot about it amongst her own duties, the pace of a god’s world and troubles, until one day Quynh appeared at the al-Kaysani palace with a man in tow, his skin wine-red, in what Andromache assumed was a commander’s uniform. But the material was strange, his armor plated like rock, the bits of fabric shiny, sleek like someone had stitched and spun a waterfall into cloth.

The man pulled out a chair for Quynh at the garden table where they were pouring over temple maps then stood, ramrod straight, behind her.

The Moon had a mug to her lips full of dark coffee, and after a long moment, put it down onto the table with a loud clink. The Sun flinched. 

“Your guard?” she asked Quynh.

“Even I have to have one,” Quynh replied, dismissively, and then went back to discussing grain offerings the Sun received.

The man was named Lykon, Andromache learned later. She and Quynh would often walk along the higher edges of the coastal cliffs together, looking over the rocks and the sea spray. If a section needed eroding Quynh rose up the sea to bite at the basalt and granite, until the rocks dusted off into the wind and water. Andromache would do the same, should the sea crawl too far in, moving rock and heavy stone. She planted her feet, barefooted on the ground, and moved mountains to push out the water.

Lykon began accompanying them, on some of these walks. He was named for a sea in the North, but its water’s were more temperate than most.

“Are all your guard sea gods?” Andromache asked her.

Quynh shared a look with Lykon, and he answered. His voice sounded like the breaking of a ship on water, hushed with the waves. “There are not enough seas for all of us to be so.”

Andromache arched a brow. “That’s still a lot of water to cover.”

Quynh laughed, throwing her head back. Her hair shone like smoothed onyx in the sunlight. Andromache's mouth felt dry. 

“It’s a big planet Andromache, but we are not infinite,” she said. “Come now, Let us spar together.”

Andromache was… interested by Quynh, to put it lightly. The hours spent with her and occasionally Lykon, as no other sea god ever showed in his stead, with the salt scented grass and the cliffs where the seabirds nested, were the times she treasured most in those days. 

Quynh was beautiful, and young for a major god. She had a lot to learn, and Andromache was happy to teach her. 

Quynh’s relationship with the celestials was… different.

The Sun and Moon were entangled in their own kind of symbiotic relationship. Push and pull. And though it had been many years since that first introduction at Lady di Genova’s castle, where Andromache had taken one good look at them and thought them inseparable, she was beginning to rethink such a conclusion.

They fought, as friends did, but when most friends fought they didn’t level a field in retaliation. It was not a surprise nowadays when Andromache would come across a ruined piece of land on her daily walks. A field smothered by frost, all the plants and the animals frozen solid. A human village full of starving men, packed up with their children looking like skeletons, with tales of crops gone withered with disease and decay, the sun drying the soil out. 

Yet the day after Andromache would be at the al-Kaysani palace, sat across from both Moon and Sun while they laughed over stories of hunts long past, with Quynh watching them all out of the corner of her eye. 

But, this was not her highest concern.

The Ocean and the Moon worked hand in hand, in a more direct way than the Sun did. The tides were something they controlled together, that required a pin-focused sense of cooperation. 

It was similar to Andromache’s closeness with the al-Kaysani clan. The Sun warmed the Earth and in turn grew the grass and in turn birthed the forests and so on. She and the Sun circled each other in a kind of summer’s dance, bright and lively. They basked in the presence of the other.

But Quynh’s and di Genova were different. It was a fight almost, a contest to see who held the most power. Some nights Andromache would ride out to the beaches, drawn by the sound of roaring, crashing, thundering. She would find Quynh and di Genova on the beach with their blades drawn, clashing in time with the rioting of the waves, Lykon watching from a safe distance, his arms crossed and his posture tight. 

By the end of it both women were bloodied, laid down in the sand, panting at the sky. 

They’d show up to their next gathering healed, but shooting wary glances at one another.

Al-Kaysani noticed, but she said little of it. Changing the subject every time Androamche tried to bring it up. 

“It’s in their natures, Andromache,” she’d say over a cup of sharp-smelling coffee. “Respect theirs, and we continue ours.”

But Andromache could not respect it, she could not let it go. Not when the bruises from their fights became commonplace on Quynh’s cheeks. Her arms were a collage of healing blues and yellows. 

One night Andromache met Quynh and found her lip split clean down the side, patched up with crooked stitches. 

Andromache made a pained sound and reached out a hand to cup her cheek. 

“You did this yourself?” 

Quynh chuckled, pushing her cheek into Andromache’s palm. “Lykon yelled at me for it. He is much neater with his stitches.”

Andromache pulled Quynh into her shoulder, their embrace tight. Quynh had her face turned up under Andromache’s chin, eyeing the swell on Andromache’s lips. 

Andromache breathed in deep and pressed a kiss to the center of her brow.

Even now Andromache could not kiss Quynh properly, like they both wished she could, for the pain it caused her.

“Andromache, please,” Quynh breathed into the space between them, a few weeks later in Andromache’s bed. Quynh sat between her naked thighs, her back to Andromache’s front. They were still damp with sweat and sex. 

“This is the way we work, the way we are, you cannot change it,” Quynh said.

“Not everything is set in stone,” Andromache whispered fiercely.

“Well, mistress of mountains,” Quynh teased. “You would know, wouldn’t you?”

“Don’t joke about this,” Andromache begged, running her fingers up and down Quynh’s arm, watching the goosebumps that rose there. 

“Joking is all I can do,” Quynh admitted. 

Andromache tried to bring it up again with the Sun. 

“Drop it, Andromache!” she’d shouted the moment Andromache spoke.

“The hell I am!” she growled. “You won’t even talk about it! Don’t you think that’s a fucking problem?”

“I know it's a problem.” The Sun stood from the chair with force, spilling her drink over the table. They were sitting in her palace gardens. Vibrant green, fixed with a long lily pool and rows and rows of lemon and blood orange trees. She walked to one of them and laid her head against the cool bark, sighing.

“She won’t come to me anymore,” Lady al-Kasani whispered, like it was a secret, a shame she was finally forced to admit.

Andromache stood behind her, and put a hesitant hand on her shoulder. She brushed it off.

Al-Kaysani turned, she had the nail of her pointer finger in her mouth, chewing on it. 

When she looked at Andromache again there was a deep crevice cutting painfully across her face.

“Di Genova is posting guards at the border now,” she said.

Andromache felt cold. Very cold. Despite the heat and the high noon sun. 

“Can she do that?” Andromache asked, because she was still young, despite her air of confidence, and there were many things she did not know. 

Al-Kaysani shook her head, lost.

“We are supposed to work together. It’s the way things are,” she said. “But last time I saw her she looked… hungry.”

For what, the Sun must have wondered, but Andromache knew what she wanted. She thought they might have been exempt from these mortal sins. Greed. Power. The lust that lesser men lost themselves to and could never come out of.

But she heard the thunder of the beaches. She saw the frost in the fields. She knew the taste of the lightning in the air wherever the Moon had once tread.

Power, and all its devices. To run the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come check me out on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/1derspark)!
> 
> And as always comments and kudos are appreciated and feed the beast :)


	6. Part 3

Nicky was barely wounded. A few cuts here and there. It could have been much worse, considering he’d been tossed off his horse, but he was trying not to think about that.

His pain was nothing to the casualties they’d suffered. Those precious young stars snuffed out so early, for what? Nicky did not know. Something foolish, something stupid.

He spent three days in bed resting. His mother allowed it, though he may have played up his fatigue in front of her, and she’d believed it, more concerned with strengthening the border guards than tending to her son.

Cometa allowed him the three days of rest, more like three days of wallowing, before coming to his room and yanking off his covers to bare him to the world.

He was fatigued, but it was more in his head now than anything else. He felt as if he was made of lead, the world seemed so far away beyond his drawn curtains. Blocking all light. He hadn’t even opened them at nighttime when he usually would. He had just laid there, staring at the ceiling, not eating, or drinking, or thinking. 

What a mess.

“Nicolo,” Cometa said when she came, sat on the edge of his bed, pushing back the tangled strands of his hair to see his face.

“Cometa please,” he whispered hoarsely.

“No, enough,” she said. “You need to get up now.”

“To do what?” he said, rolling over so that his back was to her. “If it was important my mother would have come.”

“I think you’ll find what I have to say may be the most important thing you’ll ever hear in your life,” she said.

“My life is going to be very long, Cometa.”

“Yes, and I want you to be happy for all of it,” she said. She wouldn’t have him turned away. She moved fully onto the bed and pulled him over so that he was on his back. He couldn’t not look at her then. Her eyes were kind, her face a welcome sight. Few were so in this wretched place.

“Yusuf wants to see you,” she said. 

His body froze up, a protest already on his tongue ready to march out and strike, but she shot him a look, one that promised future pain on his part if he didn’t shut up and listen. 

“How do you know what he wants?” he asked.

“Because I’ve been speaking with Andromache.”

Well, it’s nice to know that he wasn’t the only treasonous one in this family. “That’s dangerous.”

“No,” Cometa said primly, with an air of surety. “What your mother is doing is dangerous. What she has been doing is dangerous. It has been too long like this.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that. He hoped she didn’t expect him to.

After a beat, she said, “I know you still look at that sketchbook. In the library.”

It felt dirty, a crime, to even mention it. She hadn’t spoken of it since he was a child and she’d been the one to show it to him. 

“Why are you bringing it up now?” he asked.

“Because it can be like that again. Not with your mother, I know, don’t interrupt me. But with you and the man you love. We do not all have to be so separated.”

Her voice was thick when she spoke next. “We were a family once.”

Family. How malleable a word. It held many meanings, though many thought it so simple. Nicky never had one if he really thought about it, not in the traditional loving way. 

Did he have any love left in him at all? 

(Joe tried to kill him. He did. His lungs ached with the memory of the water, the savage way Nicky had gone after Joe in his battle-rage. Blood pumping, the shards of his breaking heart sharpening the point of his sword.

But where did that pain come from then? Love? He would not have fought so hard otherwise.) 

“What do you expect me to do, Cometa?” he said, voice cracking. He threw his arms out, exasperated. “Just go up to him, heart open, all apologies and forgiveness?”

She stared him down. “Is that what you want to do?” 

No. But it was close enough.

~

Cometa told him to go to the field and to wait there. Nicky feared his mother would find out. But Cometa promised she’d take care of it. 

So he rode out and found himself a wasteland. He shouldn’t be surprised but it left a pang in his gut, seeing the field in which he and Joe had shared so much, torn to smithereens.

Much of it was flooded with the muckiness of the river. The horses had kicked up the silt and the mud from the banks, creating a wet, muddy mess. 

When a god died, there was no body, at least for a minor one. Nicky had never seen one of his kind pass on before. Once struck down, there was a brief interlude where their body lingered, and then faded, passing on as to what was their nature. The Stella drifted off in bursts of sparkling light. 

The field wasn’t filled with bodies but the imprints of them, where they’d fallen in the grass. The splashes of blood in the soil that marked their fatal wounds. The horse carcasses that neither side had seen fit to take. It was a low and misty morning in autumn, there was little to the field left that was not rot and vultures, who circled the horse bodies like flies did to dung. 

The flowers were gone, the sweetness of sunrise with it, Nicky wondered if he would ever see such a meadow again.

He waited. He waited as Cometa told him to. Until from the other side of the river, in a mockery of the battle, Joe emerged from the trees, shrouded in the heavy mist. 

He was wounded, and still bearing the brunt of it. He had a limp, favoring his still healing leg. His face was bruised, and healing, there were heavy circles under his eyes. But he was still beautiful. His eyes lit up at the sight of Nicky standing there, and Nicky didn't think he deserved it. 

He stopped before the river, seemingly deciding whether or not to cross. 

Nicky did it for him. The river wasn’t deep but wide, at its deepest it hit Nicky’s midsection. It was cold, bone-chilling, the hint of an upcoming and cruel winter. It would not be long now before the snows came, and froze them all over.

Joe offered Nicky a hand out from the water, and Nicky couldn’t resist taking it. 

Then they were arm to arm, touching again, after what felt like an eternity, when the last time they’d be doing so they were trying to kill each other. 

“I—” Joe started then stopped, at a loss for words. He hadn’t let go of Nicky’s arm, rubbing small comforting circles there above the fabric. Nicky wondered if he knew he was doing it. “I did not expect you to come.”

“I didn’t either,” Nicky admitted, he owed Joe the truth. “I was… confused Joe. This whole thing was very confusing.”

“I know, I know,” Joe reassured him. He had his other hand on Nicky’s shoulder now, keeping him in close. “And I will explain, but first I must ask you to come with me somewhere. If you trust me, I understand if you don’t.”

He shouldn’t. This man held his head underwater in the hope that he’d choke on it. But why? When only a few weeks before he’d laughed with Nicky in this very spot? Why? When Cometa had apparently been sneaking behind his back to speak with Andromache on Nicky’s behalf. Cometa wouldn’t send him here only to have him run, or worse, stick a sword through Joe’s gut. 

“Okay,” Nicky said. “Take me.”

They followed the river north, Joe leading. They passed through the clearing rather quickly and were again in a section of deep wood. Nicky was sure this was on Joe’s side of the border, but he was being escorted, if anyone came at him they had Joe to answer to. 

The trees got thicker the farther on they went. Great, snarling, knotted beasts of things. Old, maybe even older than Nicky himself. Some of these trees would outlast him, he was sure. Even when Nicky would be gone, the gloom and doom of the darker forests would remain. Their hollowed centers, their twisted branches, their roots gone to ground. Lifeblood of the Earth, lungs of the land, this was Andromache’s domain. Nicky felt powerless here, under this thickness of brown and the reds and yellows and oranges of autumn.

But Joe did not lead him away from the comfort of the river. He didn’t speak either, which Nicky thought strange. Joe was a man of many words, always with something witty or kind to say. He was sweating with exertion, his limp more noticeable trying to traverse the rocky banks of the river, knotted with tree roots and tangled with weeds, the dried up shells of flowers snuffed by an oncoming chill.

Joe was breathing heavy by the time they made it to where he wanted. Nicky, who could not watch Joe struggle any longer, tucked himself under Joe’s right shoulder, smiling hesitantly at Joe’s surprised glance. But he was not pushed away.

“There,” Joe said, pointing at where the river flowed from a great thicket of trees. Most of it was hidden beneath the drooping branches and on the left a great rocky outcrop, covered in thick green lichen and patchy moss. “Under the trees, if you will guide me, Nicolo.”

“You are getting feeble in your old age, Yusuf,” Nicky said, a clumsy attempt at a tease. Joe was only a few years older than him after all.

Joe did not mind. His smirk was warm and comforting. “You are not far behind me, my friend. Help your elder then, the rocks are slippery here.”

It took a good bit of maneuvering to get Joe around the rock without slipping into the river. Joe was right, everything was slick here with water and dampness. Even the leaves, as they brushed over their heads, dripped with dew, wetting their necks and faces.

Nicky felt very much like a wet dog, coming in from the rain, smelling dirty and feeling even more so. But his discomfort was worth it, for where Joe had brought him.

It was a grotto. But a god’s grotto. 

Nile had been here. Nicky could  _ taste  _ her power. 

And it was the source of the river.

The rock that had obscured Nicky’s view out in the forest curved round into this hidden cove, where there was a great gaping hole in the rock, that rose high beyond even the tallest of the trees. This might have been the beginning of a mountain range.

The hole was like a wound in the stone. A cave, black, with no ending to it that Nicky could see. A long curtain of vines hung from the top, reaching down just about midway. They were wrinkling and yellowing with the onset of the cold but were still intact enough to obscure Nicky’s vision further inside. 

But what he could see was the roaring torrent pouring out from the cave’s face, a small waterfall, and forming into the river that Nile had created, sculpted into the land. 

“Did Nile make this?” Nicky asked. 

Joe slipped out from Nicky’s shoulder to stand on his own two feet. He’d moved over to the rock to lean against the wall for support. 

“She and Andromache did. That’s what they told me,” he said.

“It was intentional then,” Nicky said scowling. “They knew what they were doing making this, and the river through the field. It was a challenge.”

Joe sighed, frustrated. “There was no nefarious purpose on their part, Nicky. I wish you’d stop looking for one. You have your duties and they have theirs.” He gestured widely to the grotto, the cave, the bubbling water. “This is where the river was to be born.”

“Okay,” Nicky said. There was no way in which he could argue. Joe wasn’t lying, Nicky didn’t think so. And that’s what Nile said, what Andromache said, the day of the battle. Everything felt so deliberate but yet it was not. Nicky was tired of overanalyzing everything his enemies did.

His enemies.

“You tried to kill me,” he said to the man who held his head underwater. Not the one who held a place in the gold of his heart.

“I did,” Joe said, and it was pained, it sounded like there were thorns in his throat and Joe could barely speak. “It will haunt me for the rest of our days together, as I’m sure it will you.”

Joe pushed himself off from the wall, gritting his teeth as he walked. Nicky did not move to help him. 

“I did not know it was you, Nicolo,” Joe said. “I saw a man in the water, dropped from his horse, deadly but weak and saw the blood of my men on your hands. I wanted to kill you for that. But not once I saw your face.”

“Maybe that's our problem then,” Nicky said. “If that is where our violence would end, at the sight of each other’s eyes. We should kill without thought, without cause for stopping.”

“No.” Joe was very close. Nicky hadn’t been watching him, but suddenly there was only a hand’s length of distance between them. Nicky could feel Joe’s breath on his cheek. Warm, clouding in the cold air as he exhaled. 

“The problem is that we are killing each other at all,” Joe said. He put his hand on Nicky’s cheek, for support Nicky thought, then wanted to laugh about it. Joe was rubbing his thumb there, a lover’s caress. This was support of a different kind.

“There is only one in your house I would raise my sword against,” Joe breathed. “I do not want to kill anyone else you call kin, except for the one who values it most.”

Dangerous words. Nicky should kill him for it. Months ago he would have tried. But Nicky had watched his mother thunder upon the field and point her sword at Nile who’d done nothing but guide the water where it wanted to go. As a child, she’d done the same to Joe. Joe, who stood between him and his mother’s anger. Only a young boy, doing what he thought was right. Protection, for his friend who too was cut from the same sky.

Nicky let himself move without thought, and his hand came up to Joe’s neck, pressing against the skin, feeling for his pulse. That gorgeous gold blood. 

He pressed their foreheads together.

“My knight in shining armor,” Nicky whispered, it rang like a laugh, joyous. “You would save me from my mother’s cruelty, Yusuf?”

“You can save yourself.” Joe tipped the edges of their noses together. A spark running through them where they touched. “I offer my services, in whatever manner you may need them.”

“I just need you.” It was the most blatantly honest thing Nicky has ever said. No lies, no strings, no hidden truths attached. It felt good to be bare. But only for Joe, only for him.

And Joe, he did what Nicky wished for, deep within himself, so far buried he would not admit it. He tipped Nicky’s head back, just enough, a measure of control and trust. He brushed his thumb over the pink flush of Nicky’s bottom lip, pushing down, before capturing Nicky’s lips with his own.

A kiss, oh what a wonderful kiss.

Immediately, Nicky’s hands, where they’d been held firm at Joe’s neck, slipped up high into the thickness of Joe’s hair to tug him in closer. Joe grunted as he tugged, and licked in deeper, pleased. Nicky nipped at his tongue in reward. 

It wasn’t gentle, it wasn’t kind. It was  _ needy.  _ Joe’s hand skipped to Nicky’s thigh, and grabbed at him there, his thumb brushing teasingly close to his groin. Nicky gasped into his mouth at the feeling and broke away gasping. Joe went to his neck, unwilling to be parted from him in any way. 

“Joe,” Nicky breathed. All the air in the world couldn’t calm his mind now. Everything was spinning. 

“ _ Ya amar,”  _ Joe whispered into his neck. He pressed a long slow kiss over the lovebite he’d made. And nuzzled in closer. 

“Do you know how long I’ve waited to do that?” Joe husked. He worked his way back up to Nicky’s lips. Leaving kisses at his chin, his cheekbone, his forehead. Nicky was melting, leaning into it. 

Nicky laughed from where he was tucked against Joe’s chest. “Don’t tell me,” he mumbled. “I’m oblivious.”

“No,” Joe said, kissing him again. Slow and lingering, it left Nicky’s lips tingling, his stomach warm and tight. “You’re wonderful, beautiful, intelligent. I just couldn’t help myself, the moment Quynh brought you into that tavern I was lost.”

Nicky groaned, pulling back and covering his face with his hands. “I was a complete ass to you.”

Joe pulled back Nicky’s hands from his face, chuckling. “A little bit, but it didn’t matter. I was smitten.”

Nicky leaned their foreheads together again. It was good just to touch, to be close with him. Nicky thought they never could. He’d pushed down and down and down the part of him that wanted. He was so curious, so wanting of this, even when he’d been told to smother it.

“It’s eating me alive,” Nicky admitted. “What I feel for you.”

Joe made a pained sound, and pulled away. Was that too much? Nicky’s heart was in his throat but Joe only stepped back to reach into his pocket. Where he pulled out the small notebook he kept with him always. Nicky had seen him drawing in it, but Joe never showed him what was inside.

He showed Nicky now.

It was Nicky, page after page of Nicky on paper. A rough, messy sketch of him mid-swing with a sword, his face contorted with a snarl. Nicky, tying his hair back, a leather cord in his mouth while his hands held his hair. Nicky’s eyes, Nicky’s chin, Nicky’s nose and mouth and cheek drawn in exquisite detail.

Joe let him thumb across the pages, rubbing his fingers over the charcoal and smudging the edges, leaving his own mark. 

“You are not alone,” Joe said, hovering over the book and Nicky’s hung head. “You are not alone in this.”

Nicky leaned up and swallowed the rest of Joe’s words. He didn’t want to think of anything other than this, the rough and tumble of the love he could not give name to, the fire it left on his skin. 

He pressed Joe into the wall, mindful of his leg, and pushed in so they were pressed flush. 

Joe was taller than him, but not by too much, Nicky fiit against him perfectly. He was eager to lean up and sip from that glorious mouth, smelling of dry sand and yellow sun and clean open skies. Joe kept him locked there, with a hand at the back on his head, keeping Nicky fixed, unable to escape. Not that he wanted to. 

Nicky slipped his leg in between Joe’s without much of a thought, it was instinctual, and Joe groaned, throaty but rich like sweet sap, and he ground down,  _ hard,  _ the line of his dick pushed against the seam of his pants.

Nicky, whose desires were strange and fleeting, less potent as he imagined a human’s would be, reached down and cupped him like he’d done it a thousand times before.

He had no experience with this, he had no bravado, no dirty words to husk into the curve of Joe’s ear, edging him on. There was no practice for him, only an idea from what he saw between the shadows of trees. Those human lovers fucking in the night, a rhapsody in the night with their sounds. But he was growing hard, just at the sight of Joe who panted for  _ him,  _ rocking into the heel of his hand. 

“Nicky, please,” Joe whispered between kisses. They were furious, biting little things, Joe couldn’t stay long enough on him for the need to gasp for air, but couldn’t resist diving back in when he got it. 

Oh, Nicky loved him like this, Nicky loved him always, even when he thought that he couldn’t. Nicky had loved him without acknowledging it, he’d bottled it up though everyone could see. Cometa saw. Andromache too probably.

“Can I?” Nicky asked, fingers twiddling with the buttons on Joe’s pants, and his voice was different. Slurred, like he was drunk. 

“Yes, yes, but you too.” Joe had moved a hand down to Nicky’s own waistband, his fingers playing teasing strokes over soft skin. The warmth, the ache, Nicky felt deep within his bones. .

Nicky nodded, at a loss to say more and they came into a kiss again only this time with their hands occupied with each other. 

Nicky pulled Joe’s dick out, flushed and heavy in his hand. He stroked at it slowly, unsure, but Joe gave him an encouraging little grunt when he pulled up fast with a thumb against the head.

He tried again, and again, and fell into a stupor, panting open-mouthed against Joe’s shoulder while Joe got a hand on Nicky’s own dick. 

Joe brought them together with a hand on his ass, firm and they spent a lost amount of time rubbing off against each other.

Then Joe, in a moment of clarity, licked the palm of his hand and brought it down to grasp them both together, bringing Nicky’s hand in after.

It was wet and tight, and watching the head come up through Joe’s fist, desperate, leaking with pre-come, tipped him over. A pitched, unashamed wail pressed into Joe’s shoulder. 

“Fuck, fuck,” Joe cursed, watching Nicky shudder, his eyelids fluttering from where he watched, red-faced, curled up under Joe’s neck. Joe stroked harder, emboldened by the way Nicky looked with his eyes hazed and drowsy with afterglow. He took his hand slick from Nicky’s come and tugged hard at his dick until he came. Nicky squirmed at the feeling of him coming, thick against his hand and stomach. Joe seemed embarrassed, not having asked, but he raised his head up to kiss the worry of his face, sighing happily when Joe gave in. 

They exchanged drowsy sex-drunk kisses between them for a time, without speaking, content to just be, with the gurgle of the river to soothe them.

Joe pushed him away eventually, his nose turned up at the mess they made of their skin and clothes.

Nicky couldn’t help but laugh at it, the irked wonder on his face. Emboldened, he pulled off his shirt, leaving him bare and pale, to use as a washcloth. 

Joe’s eyes burnt like coals, watching him clean them up.

And as soon as they were clean Joe pressed in close again and Nicky welcomed him. His kiss spoke of fire and promise.

~

Nicky did not see Joe for two weeks after that fateful night in Nile’s newly unearthed grotto. He didn’t mind so much, it was something they agreed upon, to stay away for a good amount of time to spare Nicky’s mother the suspicion. 

But Nicky was happy, he hid his smile behind his typically even-toned face, so that his mother was none the wiser, but some days Nicky hung over the railing of his balcony and glowed so bright into the night he swore he’d set the air aflame with it. 

Even when he slept, he was content. His dreams were full of Joe. His back bared in the sunlight, the sweat dripping down his shoulders. The rough and tumble of his beard between Nicky’s fingers. The wickedness of his tongue. He’d crack the curtains at daytime, just enough to allow a sliver of light in and take himself in hand, stroking himself off to completion, moaning at the edge of softness, twisting in the sheets and curling his toes. He came with Joe’s name a hiss between his teeth, like a prayer. A god praying, sacrilegious. Nicky did it anyway.

He squinted at the light coming in between the slit and smirked as it flickered. He was not sure Joe saw him, but he liked the thought of it anyway. 

His mother seemed pleased in those two weeks to have Nicolo’s full attention, especially as she licked her war wounds. Her mood festered like a pus-filled wound, she poured over the Stella she had lost day and night, snapping about at Cometa for new ones. Stars were not being born fast enough, she had fewer soldiers, she was  _ weak.  _

She cranked up the border guards anyway. 

The field was of little use to any of them now. It was useless to her before, but it was the principle of the thing. So she set whatever Stella she had left to prance about the treeline, galavanting about on white horses, in shined silver armor; they stuck out like snowflakes on a midnight sky. 

A show of force then, rather than his mother wanting to actually  _ do  _ anything.

After enough time had passed to avoid suspicion, Nicky rode out in the dawn to meet Joe at the grotto with a grin as wide as the sky.

It was the first snow of the season. And while Nicky only got a glance at their wildflower field from a distance, weaving his way through trees and boulders and guards his mother insisted on posting even in a snowstorm, he thought that the purity, the cleanliness of the snow, might restore it. The imprints of war lasted for ages, Nicky knew this, but it would do well for nature to have her own kind of cleansing. Maybe then, the ground would not be so slick with dried blood and the bones of horses the predators left behind.

Joe picked him up and twirled him around as soon as he dismounted by the grove, laughing loud and free like he was born to do it. Nicky drew him into a kiss then and there, tasting of snowflakes and the wine he’d sipped beforehand. Joe chased whatever was left of the taste away, laying him down in the shadow of the grotto cave and sucking him down with his wet mouth until Nicky shouted and came, singing rhapsodies to the sun rising beyond the trees. 

Joe rubbed off against his thigh, too worked up for anything else, and flopped over on his side afterward so that they were laying arm to arm, elbow to elbow, watching their breath cloud into frosted mist above them.

Joe’s leg was healed, all that was left was a thin pale scar Nicky would always regret, but when Joe caught him looking he kissed Nicky senseless until he had little room to worry, or think at all.

Joe started a fire for them after a while with an easy spark of his fingers and Nicky climbed into his lap, naked but for a blanket around his shoulders and cuddled in close to keep his lover warm. 

“I missed you,” Joe said into his hair.

“I missed you too.” Nicky kissed him on the chin, unwilling to move out from the cocoon he’d made in Joe’s embrace. “But it was necessary. My mother is being very… paranoid.”

Joe snorted. “Over what? My mother and I have no plans of attack. We want nothing from her. I’d be glad to never see her face again in this life.”

“She doesn’t think practically, Yusuf.” Nicky said. “She is emotional. Anger and grief and loss.”

“Those tear you apart, if not taken in small doses,” he said. “But what does she have to grieve over?”

He didn’t know. Then again, no one ever spoke of it, the feud between these gods. Next time he saw Quynh he should ask her. But she had been holed up in her palace for weeks now, taking care of her own business. His mother was getting agitated about it, as she does when Quynh’s been out of her sight for too long. 

Nicky had proof of it all, of the days before the borders and the strife. He’d get one of them to speak about it. That’s why he brought the book today.

He stretched out from Joe’s lap to reach for his bag. Joe kept him steady with a sure hand just over his ribs. Book in hand, he thumbed in open, settling against Joe’s chest, back to front.

Nicky opened to a page with Andromache and his mother on it, and he could feel Joe’s breathing stop. He leaned over Nicky’s shoulder to get a closer look. His hand hovered over the paper in a silent question and when Nicky nodded he traced the lines drawn, the pen's ink long gone to dry in the shape of Andromache’s laugh lines, the Moon’s long sharp face. 

And then the next page to Quynh who popped up often with Andromache, a few sketches of the Sun’s men, the Moon in battle-gear, frowning, a dark-colored man with armor that looked like rock. 

The story here, Nicky could make a thousand guesses, there were many sides he was sure. 

Everyone had their part to speak of.

“This was my mother’s,” Joe said.

“Yes,” Nicky confirmed. “You have similar art styles. A beautiful hand, and a keen eye for faces.”

Joe nuzzled at Nicky’s shoulder. His body was stiff, thinking, absorbing, concerned. “Only when it is with the ones we love.

“This scares me, Nicolo,” Joe admitted. “I do not understand this book. Or why you have it.”

“My tutor showed it to me many years ago, when I was young. She was sure my mother had stolen it.”

“Yes,” Joe said. “My mother would not give this away.”

“There is a story behind this, and not one that my mother would ever tell.” Nicky asked the question he had been working up to. “Do you think your mother would tell us if you returned it to her?”

Joe was quiet for a while, Nicky thought he might not answer. But then he closed the book with a lingering caress over its leather cover. 

“No, she wouldn’t,” he said. “But I think I may be able to get Andromache to.”

Andromache was a stone wall. She was obsidian. Forged in lava and rock and hardened and polished to a cutting blade. There were few in this world that could make her do anything, and even so it had to be on a good day. 

But, Nicky would not be one to question. He did not know her as Joe did. She was to Joe as Quynh was to Nicky. Their mentors, hovering just beyond sight.

As Joe had his ways, Nicky had his own. They would put them to use.

~

Quynh crashed back into the lunar court like a storm, angry and snapping. When kneeling before his mother Nicky could see the clenching of her teeth, the hurricane in her eyes. 

It seemed that Quynh had not been informed of their skirmish earlier that autumn and came to hear of it.

“You  _ know  _ this, my lady,” Quynh growled to Nicky’s mother, and no one ever took such a tone with her. Nicky never has. It was a feast and a horror for the eyes. “Nile is following the path in which the river guided her. There is no other motive behind her actions.”

“There is always something more with Andromache. I wouldn’t think you so naive, Quynh, after all you’ve seen her do. All these years of servitude I’ve offered and you are still so blind,” his mother said dryly, she didn’t even seem bothered by Quynh’s anger. Like she expected it.

“I serve no one,” Quynh spat. She stepped forward, and her boot made a loud thumping sound on the floor. The starlights flickered with the movement. Only then did his mother look at her directly. “I  _ followed  _ you because you said you would  _ stop _ .” 

“What, did you expect me to remain idle for the rest of my days?” his mother asked.

“I thought you would have some honor,” Quynh spat. “I’ll follow no one with a lack of such.”

“You are a fool then. Those who stand alone, do not stand for long,” his mother said, coming down from the throne. The dress she wore today was a long midnight black, thick wool, with a dark-furred shawl over her shoulders. She looked like something born from tar, out of the pits of the previous world, sleek and shiny, a cobra in master form.

“I am not alone,” Quynh said, her head raised. Nicky’s mother was taller than her, by a good amount, Quynh was a small, slender woman. But she was not afraid. Nicky could hear a rushing sound, like waves in the air. A threat, to accompany the darkening of the moon in the sky. 

“Looks like it,” Lady di Genova commented, she eyed Quynh like one would an animal at market, dissatisfied with what they saw. Then, so quick Nicky barely caught it, she had Quynh’s jaw in her hand, clenched tight and brought close. 

Nicky jumped, and moved forward on instinct, but Cometa held him back with a desperate grab at the bottom of his shirt. She looked frantic, fearful with an all-knowing sense of dread.

Nicky’s movement did not go unnoticed, his mother eyed him from the side, her teeth bared. But she said nothing, turned back to Quynh.

“I knew it was only a matter of time before you had some little rebellion. It’s been millennia, and even my grip on you is not that strong. But I think you know, Quynh, the allies you have left, are  _ burning out. _ ”

The Moon tossed Quynh away so hard Quynh stumbled to the floor. There were three livid purple marks across her cheek in the shape of fingers, and a trickle of blue-black blood dripping down her lip. Quynh wiped it away on her sleeve.

“Go,” his mother said, her back turned to them all. “Come back if you choose, though I doubt you will. You are misguided and ungrateful, what use do I have for you.”

She walked past the throne and out the back door, a group of Stella following her. The door shut with a loud clang. And then it was only Nicky, Cometa, and the Ocean goddess on the floor, shivering.

“Quynh,” Nicky breathed out, barbs in his throat, and rushed to her. 

His hands flew over her form like skittish sparrows, looking for injury. Quynh allowed it, she was never much one for fuss, but soon she stopped him with a firm hand to the sternum, pushing him away.

“This is not wise, Nicky,” she said. “Your mother suspects you of treachery, do not throw in your lot with me and confirm it.”

“If she already knows then it leaves no point. I will not leave you here on the floor,” Nicky snapped. Quynh staggered as she stood, though Nicky thought she was leaning on him only to comfort him more than she needed his help. 

“Come,” Cometa said to them both, herding them out of the throne room with gentle hands. “Let us not linger here.”

Quynh would not let them stop to assess the injuries on her face, assuring them it would not be long before she healed anyway. Back to the stables, where Quynh’s horse was already saddled and held by a nervous-looking stableboy, no doubt on the Moon’s decree. Quynh swung up and settled on her mount, apprehensive.

“Nicky,” she said lingering outside the courtyard gates. “You would do well to keep yourself out of the mess that’s coming. I would not see you hurt.”

“I already am,” Nicky said.

He ran a hand over the neck of Quynh’s horse, stroking through its coat in a guise of one last check. Then he leaned up and whispered, “I’ve seen the book Quynh. I know of your life before. It was not always like this. It does not have to be anymore.”

Her leg was tensed up when Nicky went to pat it, something meant to be reassuring. She wasn’t looking at him, her hands clenched over the reins she held. 

“Nicky, there is so much you still don’t know.” She nudged on her horse and she went galloping off past the gate, into the night.

~

Nicky was both irritated and relieved the next time he saw Joe, because he brought Andromache. It looked like this would be a meeting of business then. 

“She doesn’t exactly look happy to be here,” he said to Joe, pulling him over and away from the tree Andromache was leaning against, what looked like a piece of wheat sticking out of her mouth, chewing.

“She’s  _ not _ ,” Joe sighed. “I told her about the book, but she didn’t believe me, and besides there are bigger… issues we need to address.”

Nicky noticed then, past the initial sheen of his anger, the worry in Joe’s eyes, heightened. How he seemed less bright, less vibrant. The dawn stretching over them was colder, a watery weak thing to match the skeleton trees, gone bare and white with winter. 

“You can’t ignore me forever, little Moon,” Andromache drawled. Eavesdropping. 

“I can try,” Nicky mumbled. Joe laughed at that, which was Nicky’s goal in the first place, irritating Andromache was just a bonus. His face had softened, and he’d brought a hand up to Nicky’s cheek in a moment of tenderness. Nicky was amazed, and always would be, that he had the ability to do that. Bring this man to such gentleness and peace.

“We have news,  _ ya amar _ ,” Joe said, more serious.

Nicky nodded, putting more distance between them, or Nicky would be inclined to steal Joe away to their grotto rather than deal with what Andromache had to say.

“We think that the Sun is dying,” she said. It was like a shot to the stomach. So nonchalant, like it wasn’t Joe’s mother she was talking about or the mistress she had served for years, the damn  _ Sun  _ in the sky.

“That can’t happen,” Nicky said, because it  _ couldn’t.  _ The smaller gods sure, they came and went, and they could be wounded in battle. Nicky was sure a good enough strike could end his life or one of similar precedence, but there was a difference between  _ dying  _ and being felled on the battlefield. 

“I can feel it Nicky. Even back in the tavern I felt it” Joe whispered with a fevered surety, he didn’t want to believe what he was saying but he did. “I thought I was crazy, but her power is  _ leaking  _ into me.”

“My mother did this,” Nicky snapped, aimed Andromache’s way. “It has to be something she did, this cannot be a coincidence that this is happening now. Not when we’ve finally come together, when we’re ready to talk without biting each other’s heads off.”

“Are you sure about that?” Andromache said, saccharine, her smile more a display of teeth. Nicky curled his lip up in response.

“Andromache! Please!” Joe barked, a hand at his temple. 

“What? He’s not thinking clearly, and neither are you. Lovestruck fools. There is more at stake than a rivalry. Your mother is dying _ ,  _ and I don’t know why.”

Nicky ignored  _ most  _ of that statement, he was in absolutely no state of mind to be acknowledging the first part of it. 

“Fine. What do you want me to do, Andromache? I’m no wiser than you are, I have no answers.”

“I want you to be prepared,” she said. “For what happens when your mother does find out about this. And she will. They are tied together even now, when they are apart.”

“So you want a rebellion then?” Nicky asked. He was tired, so tired of this. The shrouded words, the misplaced metaphors. Nothing was ever straight with any of them. Andromache couldn’t hold a clear conversation with them if she tried.

“Would you fight?” She was stalking up to him, out from the shadow of her tree. Every step an extension of a prowl, she did not have her axe on her, probably left on the horse, but she didn’t need it to be deadly. “Would you fight for the man you love? Would you fight for us, little Moon?”

Nicky growled, and before he knew it he had his sword out, he’d tripped Andromache with a quick sweep to the ankle and he had her on the ground. His sword kissing the bottom of her chin. 

Joe was on his arm, trying to pull him away but it didn’t matter. Joe couldn’t move him unless Nicky wanted to be moved. 

Andromache was laughing. “So easily angered. You had Joe in such a similar position as this not so long ago. Your loyalty flows as the wind does, Booker would be better relied on than you.”

“Do not doubt me,” Nicky hissed. “I watched my mother draw blood from Quynh and her court for as long as I’ve been alive. I’ve seen her madness for myself, I’ve  _ lived  _ with it, unlike you. So do not speak to me of loyalty. If it is anyone who I’d rather have under the tip of my blade right now, it would not be you.”

“Get up,” he said, stepping away. “And speak plainly from now on.”

Andromache needed no assistance. She rose elegantly, not even caring to feel for the pink flush of skin Nicky had left on her skin. Not enough to bleed, but a hint at it. 

“You may have to kill her one day,” she said.

“I know.”

“Will you?”

“I will try.” It was the best he could give her. He liked to think he could, but nothing was ever so easy.

“Good. You’re not lying.” She nodded to him, and then Joe. “I’ll give you both some time, but Joe, I need you back home before the sun reaches its peak.”

She broke off into a jog, the leaves crunching under her feet. Nicky and Joe watched her swing into the saddle and ride off, until they could follow her figure no more.

“Joe,” Nicky said, letting go of the steel, the iciness he’d held in his voice as a shield in front of Andromache. Only now, would he show such weakness without worry. 

“Nicky.” Joe had let himself cry, and in the dawnlight his tears looked orange, firestone opals fallen from his lashes. Heaven and Earth he was beautiful in sorrow, more so, bright as a tiger. Nicky thought that it was strange how the colors of dawn changed so frequently between them. Pink pastels like the inside of an egg, cracked open on a yellow yolk. Days like this one where the sky bled blue and white, brighter than bone. 

They met and loved under a sky that changed. They were not so confined to day and night. Their horizons were colors of a different kind, something like yellow, something like blue, something like orange. Nicky had no name for it.

“Oh, Joe,” Nicky croaked, letting his own colors fall. He rushed into Joe’s arms, weeping. And they cried together, leaving tears, water-stains on their clothes and hair. It felt good to do it, a kind of mutual marking, drained of pain and sympathy and the fear of what was coming.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Nicky babbled into Joe’s chest. “It shouldn’t be her, it’s not right.” They both knew who it should be.

“Nicolo.” Joe kissed the top of his head, hard, like he was trying to make a mark, an imprint that would never leave. “None of this is right.” He put a finger under Nicky’s chin and tipped him up to see. Joe always had the most wonderful eyes. “But it is not your fault, and it is not mine. And I would have no one else in the world beside me.”

“I do not think I could do it alone,” Nicky whispered, one final confession.

“You are not alone,” Joe said and kissed him gently, as if Nicky was made of glass. “You and I, we will never be alone again.”

“Do you—” Nicky paused. He had to make sure this was right. What he said now was important. Everything now held weight. “Do you want to do this? This war that Andromache speaks of.

“We could run away,” Nicky whispered, afraid the world would hear him. “We could make our own way, and come back when it is done.”

“No, we couldn’t,” Joe said, but it was not unkind, only the truth a small part of Nicky still wanted to badger and bury. “Much of this is our own doing. We have to finish it.”

“After then?” Nicky asked, desperate to keep a semblance of this fantasy intact. Their “after” would be riddled with responsibility, and no doubt be a time of rebuilding. Nicky wanted more than mornings with Joe, he wanted every day, every night, no matter their duties. He wanted to know what it was like to sleep in a bed marked by the warmth his lover left behind. What it would be like to be kissed awake by something stronger than the sunlight.

He imagined it would feel like paradise.

“After, whatever it is you want I will give,” Joe promised. He brought up Nicky’s hands, and kissed every fingertip, with a spark of pleasure. “You have my heart, you have my life. I love you Nicolo, and even that is not enough.”

Nicky squeezed, gripped Joe’s hands so hard he swore he’d break them. He wanted to, only he had the right. 

_ Break my heart, he wanted to say, even though you already have. You broke it and fit yourself in the fashion of its pieces. The blood in my veins is silver and gold. It is yours. _

“I love you,” Nicky said, their hands wrapped together between their chests. His head was spinning in grief and rapture. “When this is over, take me away, and we will make it enough.”

~

It is hard not to notice, after, the waning of the sun in winter.

It had always been their weakest season, and Nicky’s strongest. But it was as if every hour shortened, every day ending in a weak stream of yellow-white sunlight, was another indication of what Joe and Andromache predicted. 

It felt less. It was so very, very cold. 

He expected his mother to gloat, floating from room to room with wishes of war on her tongue. Nicky had endured such before, the long dragging meetings where she spoke of rebellion, retaliation, staring at the border on a map with a frenzied kind of hunger. But in actuality, he saw very little of her.

She was insistent on running through her duties and Nicky was content to let her. It gave him time to assess, to go about the camps of the Stella and assert his certainty in their loyalty to him. Almost everyone was, except for the guard that protected his mother, though Nicky was sure even they could be swayed. He would not risk speaking with them lest word get out. Already he operated in half-truths and turnarounds. 

Joe promised Nicky last he saw him that whatever he would do, Nicky would have his support. Not just in name, but in action and the backing of the soldiers. Andromache and her lot included, along with Nile’s newfound court. 

Nicky knew that to prevent his mother from attempting any more aggressive expansion there would need to be a show of force from all the gods of power. 

And though he had gathered Joe and Andromache and Nile to his cause, he would need Quynh as well. 

But she was nowhere to be found.

He’d even enlisted Booker’s help.

“The seas are strange these days,” Booker told him. They were on a ride through the forest, inspecting the border guards under the Moon’s request. She’d set up a series of logged barricades a mile wide each way, hidden amongst the undergrowth and slathered with tar. 

Nicky guided his horse beyond the barrier, eyeing it with what he hoped was the keen calculating gaze of a commander, that didn’t betray the oily feeling rising in his throat at the sight of these traps.

“Quynh has been very quiet,” Booker continued on. “There have been few storms, little disturbance to the humans. Copley tells me her temples are full to bursting with gifts in thanks.”

“Maybe she’s gone dormant,” Nicky said, offhandedly. Though he knew Quynh would never go underground for long. She was too wild to stay out of the fray. But no one had heard from her.

“Nicky,” Booker said, pulling his horse to a stop along the beaten path. The working Stella moved around them like fish in a stream, the sound of pounding mallets and shouted commands like river water. “I may not have been around for long, but even I know when someone is lying in wait.

“Quynh will not be summoned like some servant. When she comes I hope you are ready for it.”

“I will be,” Nicky said, with a conciliatory nod. Then, “I hope that wherever you stand when the time comes, you come out relatively unscathed,”

“Relatively?” Booker was smirking. 

“Well, we could all do with a little maiming.”

They parted ways shortly thereafter, Nicky returning to the palace, Booker off to wherever the wind took him. As soon as Nicky rode through the gate a stable boy came out to grab his horse, which was nothing unusual, but the way he shook and shivered when Nicolo dismounted gave cause for alarm.

“My lord,” the boy said, his hands tight on the reins. “You mother, she wants to see you. She… she…”

He was crying now, sobbing out in panicked little breaths. Nicky grabbed him by the shoulders, a grounding presence. 

“Speak plainly. It is alright. Deep breaths.” Nicky evened out his own breathing for the boy to follow until he was well enough to speak again.

He swallowed. “She came out earlier in the night, and she  _ grabbed  _ Cometa, screaming about something, I’m not sure, it was so fast. Then someone came down to ask where you were but you’ve only just come back and—”

“Okay, okay, I’ll go up right now. Don’t worry.” He patted the boy on the shoulder and rose from his crouch, eyeing the door to the palace. 

“If I’m not back by sunrise, I need you to get someone to send for the Wind, alright?” he asked. He wasn’t sure how the boy would do it, or if he could, but it was his only option. There was no time, and no one else here to direct.

He waited for the boy’s nod and then set off for the door.

The halls were empty and dark. Gone were the small glowing starlights, a constant comforting hover. The Stella then, were not here.

Nicky broke into a run, sprinting for the throne room. The doors already open, he expected to come across a wall of soldiers, some massive show of force for him to wade through, but there was nothing, almost nothing.

The great crawling windows up the side of the walls poured in black from the night, the stars were dim, as was the moon, and Nicky saw only a shrouded figure upon the throne and Cometa, her skin flickering a dull intermittent blue, stretched out across the floor, coughing up blood onto the tile.

“Nicky,” said the figure. They rose from the throne, smooth and sinuous, walking around Cometa’s coughing form like she was nothing more than a pebble in the road. 

“Mother.” Nicky was very, very still. “You asked for me.”

“Oh yes.” She strode further down the length of the room, what little light there was coming in through the windows cast her in gray shadow. She was wearing her black armor. Her war armor.

“I’ve never had to kill anyone in front of you before,” she said. “An execution. It is past the time that you see one.” She had a long knife in her hand, playing within between glints of light. Cometa had dragged herself up into a sitting position, leaning heavily on the throne for support. She was eyeing Nicky with something like sorrow, regret. 

_ Oh. Oh she broke you too.  _

“Mother… whatever it is Cometa has done I’m sure there’s an explanation.” He had to try, he had to do something. He had control, he  _ did.  _ If anyone deserved to make it out of this it was Cometa. Cometa, not him.

“Oh there is an explanation. It’s you. Only I can’t kill you.”

“My lady,” Cometa croaked, her tongue dripped black blood. And her body shivered in shades of blue. 

The Moon ignored her, but Nicky did not. He could not help the instinctive few steps he made in her direction, but then his mother was  _ there,  _ in front of him and she was so tall suddenly, large and looming. He felt naked, he felt hunted.

“She will die no matter what you do, Nicolo, I’ve punctured her lung,” she said. 

Nicky was sparkling, he could feel the tingle of light beneath his skin, on the edge of bursting. If he could get past her maybe he could—

Cometa screamed, but she hadn’t been struck. It was for him, and the blow he’d been dealt. He was too stunned to do anything but drop, his mother had kneed him in the groin, and while he was bent double, kicked him in the stomach with the hard point of her armored boot. He was on the floor, gasping without a sound, unable to breathe, to speak, but he  _ felt.  _

“Mother,” he begged, like vinegar on his tongue, but this was all he had and all he ever reverted to. There was a straight line back to here, back to home, not one that even Joe could sever. “Please.”

“It took a while, but she told me eventually. You’ve been seeing the al-Kaysani heir. You’ve been seeing all of them apparently. Andromache as well. For what, Nicolo, what did you think this would bring you?”

She didn’t even grant Joe his name. He snarled at her, “ _ Nothing,  _ I wanted nothing from them.”

“Maybe so, you are my son. You’re smart, in the beginning you would have protested I’m sure. But look at you Nicolo, you don’t deny it. The betrayal.” She stepped away from him and walked to the window. Put a hand on the glass. 

“Would you like to see what it's bought?” she asked the room and to the both of them.

Where she’d kicked him in the stomach she’d ripped skin, there was silver blood staining his hand where he held his insides in. Rising to a knee he clumsily clambered over to Cometa who was gaping open-mouthed like a fish as she choked and choked on her lungs, drowning her alive.

“The Stella, I know you think they are loyal to your cause. And it’s probably true. But I’m not dead yet Nicolo, and I have more power over them than you think. I’ve sent them beyond the border. To the Sun’s lands,” the Moon said. 

“No,” Nicky breathed, he’d torn off a piece of his shirt and pressed it to the great gaping wound on Cometa’s chest. It did little, his hands were soaked, and her light was flickering out.

“Only half our forces at first, to draw them in. Al-Kaysani did always underestimate how many stars there were in the sky. I think we can match up to her forces, don't you think, Nicolo?”

She could. She could. That’s why they’ve lasted this long, an island. 

“One day again you’ll lead them.” She’s moved from the window now, and Heaven and Earth she was smiling. Behind her, there was the faintest glow on the horizon. 

Fire. White fire, blue fire, black fire. The burning of  _ stars. _

Nicky understood what she had done with a sudden, heart-stopping, clarity.

She bent down and grabbed Nicky by the chin, he groaned, thrashing, trying to push her away but trying not to hit Cometa whose eyes were glassy, unmoving, she was  _ pale  _ now, no, no, she was  _ dead, how could she be dead— _

“One day,” his mother repeated. “But for now, I think this job is mine.”

She jerked his head back, knocking him against the floor. He almost blacked out and there was a moment where he thought he was rising, an owl on high, drifting with the wind to strike, then she struck him across the face and he fell unconscious, alone, while his mother walked out the room to war. 

~

  
  


Miles away where starfire met the sky Joe stuck his sword into the ground, using it for leverage to keep himself standing, kneeling. His leg was broken, and he could no longer control the fires.

He was not familiar with the slow sinking feeling of dread coming upon a battlefield. It was more often a sense of anticipation, sparking with the pretense of a fight.

But when the alarms had sounded through the night, the sharpness of a battle-horn and Joe had tugged on his clothes and armor it was not the pleasure of war that came to mind. It was concern for the one who held his heart.

Joe could not fight Nicky again on the battlefield. He would not do it. But he rounded his men together for the ride down to the brushlands where a strange colored fire was rising amongst the human villages.

Around him the landscape was blazing, exploding in sparks, and he could not  _ control  _ it. Long had he bent flame to his will, but these fires were green and black and maroon, they fell through his fingers and ate up everything they touched. Not a cleansing fire, a foreign fire.

Every few seconds one of Joe’s soldiers dropped and dissolved into a cloud of white, dead, burned by this plague. It was getting difficult to see with all the smoke. 

Joe pushed himself up and out of the heated grass, groaning over his leg, the wound on his temple dripping a watery gold. He summoned fire into his hand and skirted it up the sword to make it glow. He had energy left. He could still fight. 

(He could get to Nicky even, he could. He had not seen his love on the battlefield. He should have been here. Nicky was not one to remain idly back. Something was wrong.)

He stood searching for some of his men to rally to, but his forces were dwindled. The Stella popped in and out of the smoke like banshees, latching themselves onto the bodies of his men and then  _ exploding  _ in columns of fire. They cried as they did it, tears running freely down their faces, they looked pained as they killed themselves, scared. 

Joe waded through the horror, hope waning, until rushing through the fire, on a horse black as pitch, armored in brassy colored metals, came his mother. 

He’d told her to stay back, to save her strength, he had enough of it now that he could lead their troops and  _ win.  _ He was so sure, and he couldn’t risk her. Not her life. They had so little time left together already. 

But here she was, the savior in flaming gold, she took down the Stella before they could combust with practiced ease. They fell and fell and fell. The tide was turning. 

Then, beyond the fires, creeping out into the forest, lighting up the bared trees that were dry from winter, came a low rumbling thunder.

Joe shared a moment of laughter with hope for the rain he thought was coming.

But then the Moon crested over the hill, rearing on her horse, and descended upon them with a hundred more burning stars.

Joe had barely enough time to scramble for cover, ducking under the carcass of a fallen horse to brave the stampede.

And it was from there, with the smell of death-rot in his nose, that he watched the Moon and the Sun come together for the first time since he was a child, on that fateful day in his castle. 

There was no clash of light. No sparking in the sky to mark it. Instead, Lady di Genova stalked around the one who was once her oldest, dearest friend, and stuck her sword, the tip ignited in bladed biting frost, right through his mother’s stomach.

She cried out, but Joe could not hear it, his heart a drumbeat in his ears. The flames were hot and the fires were rising.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come check me out on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/1derspark)!
> 
> And as always comments and kudos are appreciated and feed the beast :)


	7. Interlude 3

Andromache began this war.

(She would later hate herself for it. The rashness. It had been fueled by anger just as much as it had been fueled by love. And in the end all it did was make things worse, as war often did.

She’d once thought of herself as beyond the failings of mortal men.

She was wrong.)

She did not tell Quynh about it, if she had the Ocean goddess would not doubt have protested. Quynh didn't need anyone fighting in her honor. But Andromache thought she needed someone fighting for her safety.

Andromache and her court of gem-toned soldiers descend upon the forested dens the Moon called home with a fury. All the nearby towns, the temples to the night sky, are sacked and its people slaughtered. Andromache killed because she thought it for the greater cause of her love. Her labrys slick in star-blood and that of mortal men.

The Moon had laughed at her from across a glen Andromache’s soldiers set alight with fire on the first battle-day.

“Of all the foolish things you could have done,” Lady di Genova said to her, turning on her horse, “You take the path most shadowed, Andromache. I will have you head on a spike adorning my gate, and then maybe you will learn to keep your nose out of my business.”

“You have no right to her! _ ”  _ Andromache screamed through the flames, her throat stinging with ash. 

“Neither do you!” she shot back, and sent the Stella upon her.

The war dragged on for many months. Advances and departs into one another’s territory, the sacking of human settlements in between. The temples to the Moon and Earth waned between bursting with gifts, prayers for it all to end, and a continued retinue of curses, damning them all. Andromache did not care, they balanced each other out and she went on fighting anyway.

It was not long before their battle strayed upon al-Kaysani lands, and the Sun was forced to give up on her indifference.

Di Genova did not care for her neutrality, she saw enemies everywhere even without Andromache.

There was no logic in it, her desire for destruction, but Andromache would take advantage where she could.

Andromache stood in one of the wasted border towns with the Sun, riding the last green bits of grassland before the desert stretched on into sand, and counted herself lucky for another ally.

“I did not think she would go this far,” Lady al-Kaysani said, sifting through the ruined remains of the village. The humans had long gone, or were dead. The whole place smelled of flesh and sweat and the oncoming stench of corpse-flies. 

The Sun had a broken pot in her hands that she’d picked out of the rubble to study. There were swirls of clouds and a dusky painted sun painted on the rim. She looked at it for a long while, before throwing it back into the carnage where it shattered. 

“You may have started this, Andromache, but I will be ending it,” she said, a pledge of allegiance, a seizure of command.. After all, the army of the Sun was as vast, ancient, powerful as the Sun herself.

Their combined forces quickly overwhelmed the Moon’s, and her army was pushed back out of their lands, weakened, a slow chipping of ice off a block. And it seemed for a while like they were winning. 

But Andromache had still not seen Quynh. Until the night the Ocean swept into her war tent to seal their fates. 

Andromache didn’t sleep much these days, spending her late hours by the war table with candlelight, pouring over maps and reports. The guards outside her tent were easy for Quynh to dispatch.

It had been so long since Andromache had seen her, too long. She looked haunted, she walked with the air of some deep and terrible sea creature, cornered and quick to bite.

“You,” Quynh started, her voice an angry rasp. “Are going to get us all  _ killed.”  _

“Quynh.” Andromache stood, making a move to touch her, take her love into her arms, and wash all this fear away. But Quynh stepped away from her. “I’m doing my best for you. This cannot go on. You’re hurt, and she’s taking advantage of you. You have to see that?”

“I  _ know  _ what she is, better than you.” It was almost like she was pleading, but everything was tinged in frustration, the air in the tent tight and taught between them. “She is a celestial Andromache, more powerful than you or I will ever be. How can you be so stupid?”

“I will not let her use you.” Andromache barked. She knew what this was. She knew the bruises, the pain, the ache in Quynh’s eyes after those nights on the beaches. Why was she fighting this? Why couldn’t she see Andromache was doing this for her? Andromache didn’t understand it at all. 

Andromache reached over to the war table and picked up a familiar leatherbound notebook. She shoved at Quynh open to the pages where the Moon had been drawn by al-Kaysani’s hand.

“This!” Andromache hissed pointing at a smiling di Genova on paper. “This woman is gone, how can you not see that? How can you serve her still.”

Quynh kicked her in the stomach, and Andromache dropped the notebook in her shock clutching her hands over her gut. 

“Shut up! Shut up Andromache, you have no idea what I’ve seen. What I deal with. This is not about you!” Quynh screamed at her, she had the book clenched in her hand, making imprints on the leather with her nails. 

“I know you mean well,” Quynh said, her voice shaking. “But the power between me, between her. It is ours to dictate. I do not need a savior.”

“Quynh,” Andromache started.

“No,” Quynh said. “It is too late now. You must finish this yourself. I will not help you.”

She left Andromache there in the tent, a map the size of the world spread out over her war table, and the plans to raze it to ruin written down in ink. 

These were the things Andromache was willing to do for love. 

(Later she’d realize that in her folly she had no right to label this as love. Some of this was jealousy. Some of it was suspicion.

She had not asked Quynh if she needed help. She should have.)

And the next time Andromache saw her it was as a flash of black hair, a rider on a horse, directing her own troops through an ocean town with the Moon at her side.

Andromache would have drowned with the town, had her men not pulled her out, as she watched Quynh and the Moon flood the coast, working in tandem. The two sides had decided themselves it seemed. It made Andromache furious, it also made her regret.

They fought and bled and killed, desecration without regard for the world between them. Andromache was weaker for it, scarred as the land is scarred, but she fought on and what the Earth lost in willpower the Sun gained in fury.

An attempt at a truce is made, all four gods in a forest, halfway between the celestial palaces. Around them, the world burned and drowned in turn.

Andromache stood behind the Sun and her guard as Quynh did behind the Moon. The lines were drawn so deeply between them that Andromache ached, a deep crevasse carved into her very soul. The war had fallen beyond her grasp and into the hands of the gods Andromache had stoked. 

This was her fault.

Quynh would not look at her, and that was her fault too. 

“This is madness,” Al-Kaysani insists. “We can stop this now and end the fighting, but you want to go on? Haven’t we done enough already?”

“Ask Andromache,” The Moon said, she was smiling, the way a hunter would come upon a trap they’d successfully sprung. “Is this not the fruit of her labors? She so likes to interfere in matters not of her own, and so do you.”

The Sun narrowed her eyes. “This is our matter now.”

Andromache had seen these two gods spar, so very long ago now. And when they did it was tamed, restrained, held back in the way one did for a friend, a teacher. A playful exchange of blows that were meant more for practice than any kind of true wounding.

She was not prepared for her lady to dismount and draw her sword, and swing it at the Moon. 

The Moon raised her sword at the last moment, white, crawling frost eating up the steel, from hilt to tip, and when their blades clashed, Andromache was thrown back, blinded. 

The guard closest to the celestials were incinerated. An instant, simple death. Those a few hundred yards back were burned or frozen over. They would die within the month, after many agonizing days. No amount of celestial healing would cure these wounds

Andromache and Quynh live, though they would come to wish they didn’t. They slink away, wounded, and find themselves summoned by their goddesses, firmly entrenched on opposite sides of a rift they never meant to start. It is the last time they all meet.

And the forest, the odd stretch of land where the titans clashed, was destroyed down to the roots. In a year all the trees and branches and wood would be taken by the Earth, decayed, reclaimed. A desolate valley all that remains.

And in time, in which the divisions between the gods deepened into a crevice that Andromache never imagined being crossed, that destroyed forest became a field.

And in the summer it bloomed with flowers.

~

Lady al-Kaysani’s son was a riot of energy so wild, she could not handle him by herself. 

From the moment he could roll over in bed he caused chaos, he screamed and cried and laughed, he drove his nursemaids mad and his mother madder. But she loved him with a veracity that even scared Andromache at times.

But Andromache could not blame her, tensions had lessened, but were by no means gone. There had not been a skirmish between the celestials since the last, but they had made their stances clear. 

The border was the field, and no one was to cross it. The Moon put up a constant rotation of guards, only occasionally did the Sun go down to see them, guided by Andromache. Eventually, she stopped. 

“There’s no point in it anymore, Andromache,” she said. “What would I have to say to her should she show?”

“Maybe I might have something,” Andromache offered.

The Sun gave her a look. Yusuf was at her feet playing with a wooden block, there were curls of ashes on the edges from where he’d burned it. He was getting stronger by the day, and the Sun knew little of how to help. This power of fire was not hers. 

“It is not the Moon with whom you wish to speak,” she said. “And that’s a lost cause.”

Andromache went years without seeing her, not a glance of Quynh or her court. Not Lykon, not her horse dripping seafoam on the beaches. Andromache looked for her. She rode the coastlines and found nothing. She spent days on the back of a horse, before the Sun or her own court inevitably called her home.

If Quynh wanted to be seen, she would be. Andromache gave up.

Yusuf needed her attention anyways. The boy set his nursery on fire one day in his sleep, and burned a couple of nursemaids, who were hesitant to go near the young prince afterward. 

“I don’t know—” The Sun started, wincing as Yusuf got a hold of her hair. He was two or three, eager to grab and pinch everything in reach. If they were lucky it wouldn’t burn up in his hand. “I’m not practiced in this art. My power is in life, not fire.”

“They are not so different,” Andromache said, taking Yusuf from her arms into her own. “Fire destroys but think of what it leaves behind. Every so often a forest needs a culling.”

She hummed. “Still, I cannot teach him.”

“I will try.”

It’s difficult to get a toddler to do anything, Andromache learned. Yusuf was smart, but unruly, running about the desert cliffs, hands to his mother’s sun summoning sparks into his hands. If the wind blew too hard they would drift and catch alight on stray pieces of grass that Andromache hastened to put out. 

Andromache was patient with him, having had many years of practice caging her anger, her disdain for the situation she was in, and had no one else to blame for. And it was hard, so very hard, to be mad at Yusuf who was all things bright and bubbly even as he burned flowers with his fingertips.

After a while, there are no more accidental burnings, no more frustrated tears, only determination. She holds his hand above the petals of a daisy and forces magic into him. At first, the petals curl into ash and fall to the ground. Then he learns to push back at her, with his own power.

She made the task harder for him, so that he would learn. And he did. The petals become burned, then singed, then lightly dusted in fire, then he can grip the stem in his hand with the hearty greed of a child and not have it wither. 

She took him to high cliffs of the desert where the grasses grew tall and dry. She walked with him hand in hand through it all and they extended their fingertips to the blades. When they did not smolder she praised him and that night for dinner he would have his favorite, of which his mother was always happy to serve.

Lady al-Kaysani was protective but not in an overbearing way. She loved her son, she held him and sang to him, her hands a lingering presence over his brow when she bid him goodnight. She allowed Andromache seniority in his physical training because she knew she herself could not.

Oh to be a Sun of healing and not of war. Lady al-Kaysani could raise flowers from the dead with sunshine, while her son set them aflame. It pained her, Andromache saw, that chasm between them. But it was no matter to Yusuf, who trailed after her in the mornings on gangly legs staring wide-eyed at the Sun while she mounted her horses for the day’s rounds in her bright armor. 

Andromache wondered if the Moon’s son did the same.

She only ever saw him once, and she would have thought it a trick of the eye, had she not caught the silhouette of Quynh and her waterhorse too. 

Andromache had taken Yusuf out farther than she ever dared before, onto the edge of the brushlands where they could see the forests of the Moon in the distance. It was bordering on twilight, sweet and gentle with a carnation pink sky. 

She’d been leading Yusuf back to their horses, when she’d caught a flicker of white light out the corner of her eye.

There, a flicker in the forest. It burst, then waning.

Then it emerged into a clearing, into the shape of a boy. 

He was Yusuf’s age, younger by a few years. He had his mother’s nose, and her stern face, the strongness of her jaw.

And then there was Quynh, behind him, guiding as much as Andromache was doing to Yusuf. She seemed to be speaking to him in a low tone, her head tucked low to speak into his ear. Whatever she said made the boy smile, a small but shining little thing, and when Quynh brought him over to her horse, who was tossing his head, spraying droplets of water off its mane, the moon child laughed, stroking gently over its fur.

“Andromache?”

Yusuf was already saddled, and watching her with a confused, cocked head. He could not help but notice where she was looking and went to guide his horse in that direction.

“No! Stay back,” Andromache shouted, raising her arms up to block his way. The horse startled and pranced back, but Yusuf was a good rider and held the horse steady.

“Andromache, are you alright?” Yusuf asked, but she wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. She’d glanced furtively over her shoulder looking for Quynh, if she noticed, if she heard her.

She saw nothing, the moon child was gone, and so was the Ocean.

She would have thought she dreamed it, were it not for the darkness of the Moon that night, and Yusuf’s pinched face the entire ride back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come check me out on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/1derspark)!
> 
> And as always comments and kudos are appreciated and feed the beast :)


	8. Part 4

His mother should have locked him up. With all of Nicolo’s shifting tendencies speared and bloodied in the light of the fires he set in motion, he could not be trusted. She should have thrown him in the dungeons just to teach him what _desperation_ was.

(Family is you. Family is us, Nicolo. There is no one else. Remember this.)

But she doesn’t, and she’s smarter for it.

Nicky could leave. The palace courtyard is wide open, as were the stables. Nicky spent his sleepless days curled up in the corner of his balcony listening to the sounds of horses. Their brays and hoofbeats. 

He did not dream of escape. She knew he wouldn’t. Not with the way the land had descended into a black mountain of ash. On the farthest horizon Nicky could see the smoke rising, to this day, two weeks after the battle. 

He did not sleep until he was forced to by his body. When he did sleep, it was where he collapsed, the bedroom floor, the bathtub, the balcony. 

He dreamed of Cometa when he slept, and the color seeping out of her skin as he held her. He dreamed of himself, crawling through her remains, the blood like indigo on his hands, darker than any ink, stinging like poison.

He dreamed of his mother stepping over them, her hands extended into claws. The frost that _burned_ at her fingertips when she grabbed him, the phantom pain like a brand on his mind. In his dreams, she was a monster. In his dreams, she had fangs and teeth. In his dreams, she was otherworldly and ancient, foreign and undying. When he woke he found himself rubbing his arms, soothing away the unseen marks of a brand.

He dreamed of the last time he saw her, when she’d walked into his room a few hours after she’d knocked him unconscious, still in her armor. There was golden blood on her boots, her chestplate, sprayed in paint across her cheeks. She spoke to him then, but he could not remember what she had said. He’d turned over, too weak to face her, and curled up into the pillows to muffle his sobs.

He reopened the wound in his stomach that night with all his crying. He let the Stella, the ones his mother hadn’t exploded into flame, stitch him up without moving, eyes fixed upon the ceiling.

The slow healing wound left a scar, a long, ugly, silver gash across his stomach. No amount of tending to by the Stella would put him back together again. 

He bore it like a brand.

He dreamed of Joe. 

And it hurt more than anything to dream of him. It hurt more than the blood of his tutor, his friend, his one and only savior in this place. It hurt to look at Joe in his dreams, for they were good dreams. Joe in the grotto, curled up against his back while the leaves fell in a red rain around them. Joe in the flower field, and that little snarl-smile he gave on a good parry. 

Nicky _took_ that, took Joe from this world. He’d seen the blood on his mother’s boots. It was his fault, if he’d just stayed home and withered away inside like his mother wanted. Kept the borders, waged her petty wars. He would be nothing, but what would it matter if everyone else got to keep on living.

These were the things he dreamed of when he slept. And when he awoke he did not think of escape. He let himself sit and stare. And cry. But for that, he was sure to make no sound.

~

  
  


Nicky’s windows were locked. They usually were, this was not some new punishment his mother insisted on for his imprisonment. 

He’d been locking his windows as a child, one of the many things his mother had trained into him. An outdated and unneeded precaution. There were very few in the world who would dare break into the house of a god. No mortal would even get past the front gates, and if Andromache or Joe were to try it, they’d try to burn the place to the ground first. 

So on a night when he’d fallen into bed after four days spent awake, a window creaked open in his room and a large hooded figure crept in to put a dagger to his throat. It took more than a minute for him to wake. Booker was lucky he didn’t scream, because he wasn’t even covering Nicky’s face. 

(Heaven and Earth, it was _good_ to see him.)

“What. Are you doing?” Nicky growled through his teeth.

“Saving you,” Booker said casually, like he was commenting on the weather. 

“You can’t,” Nicky said, eyeing the knife. “And you’re doing a shitty job.”

“Don’t be a smartass,” Booker said but leaned back anyway, watching Nicky warily. “I’m doing you a favor.”

“Booker, I can do nothing out there. If I leave…”

Booker held up a hand. “I know what will happen if you leave. We all know. Your mother is the one out there, burning down the Earth.”

“Oh and so you want more of it?” Nicky hissed. 

“No!” Booker snapped. “I’m tired of it. She’s killing more mortals than are worth the trouble. Copley is saving those he can, but it's a losing battle.”

His voice was loud enough that they both froze, listening for any footsteps, any indication that they’d been heard. When a minute passed in silence Nicky reached over in bed and slapped Booker hard on the arm. 

“Get _out_. Leave.” 

“No.” Only now Booker would choose to stand firm on something, when all of Nicky’s energy, his righteousness, had been run dry. Fuck their cause, fuck all of it, he didn’t care anymore.

“Whether you believe it or not, Nicolo, what you have been doing matters,” Booker said, softly. He seemed to be taking a different approach to this. “You cannot stop now. Wallowing here will do nothing. I know you don’t want to hear this from me, but it's the truth. And Joe needs your help.”

Oh the traitorous heart. His chest seized up tight. 

_Joe? Joe was dead. Booker was lying, he was lying. Nicky had seen the blood for himself, slick on his mothers boots._

“Nicky? Nicky?”

“Joe,” Nicky managed to croak. He felt suddenly so bare, so vulnerable. Unwashed and uncaring in his bed, dressed in a flimsy nightshift. It was painfully, heartbreakingly human. He was glad it was Booker, who walked so frequently among them, adopting their moods and fashions, was the one here to witness it. He did not think he could bear it being anyone else. 

Even gods, it seemed, were not exempt from a mortal kind of heartbreak. 

“Joe is alive?” he asked, voice trembling. 

“Oh,” Booker said, realizing. “Oh yes, he is, he’s alright. I’m sorry Nicky, I should have said that first.” 

“Yes.” Nicky nodded stiffly. “You should have.”

“But his mother…” Booker trailed off, looking for the right word. “She is wounded. Gravely so.”

Nicky could hear what he wasn’t saying. And it wasn’t a surprise, it was the logical conclusion. The gold on the Moon's boots wasn’t Joe’s but his mother's. The continued dimming of the sky, that slow spreading death could only mean one thing.

“She is dying,” Nicky said. 

“Yes,” Booker confirmed. A sad, wry smile. “All things come to an end, even us it seems.”

“I’ve expedited her death,” Nicky said, he could not help but turn his head away, shutting his eyes in shame. 

“We all have,” Booker said. “But there is no use in pointing fingers Nicky. Better your energy be used elsewhere.”

Nicky wasn’t sure how much energy he had left. He was scraped, prodded and poked at. It was as if a spoon had scooped out all the light in his body, carved off every muscle, every piece of sinew, and tucked it away somewhere else. 

There was little left he had to offer.

But, Joe. He could focus on that. 

“Is Joe alright?” he asked. 

“No,” Booker said. He rose from where he’d been sitting on the edge of the bed, re-adjusting his shirt. “But you will make him better.”

It was strange to hear him speak so blatantly of their affection. Nicky was used to the secret, the hidden pleasure in a dawn-lit field, wonderful and toe-curling, thoughts of Joe’s mouth open on a gasp. 

“Take me to him,” Nicky demanded. 

~

Lady al-Kaysani would not die in her bedchamber, huddled under a mountain of sheets and blankets, the windows thrown open to air out the stench of death.

No, she would not go out in the stinking, dramatic, final woes of a destroyed human body.

She would die differently.

The palace was quiet upon Nicky and Booker’s arrival. The sun in the sky, despite everything, was high and bright, shining as if it were any other day. Though there were great swathes of clouds gathered about it in threatening clumps. 

As Nicky followed Booker to the cliff garden, he spotted the cloud-people, the soldiers and servants of the Sun, lingering in the shadowed corners of awnings, beneath the drape of a lemon tree, shivering and downcast. They were all angled towards the end of the garden, that opened up to a clearing that Nicky assumed was for sparring. A long expanse of smooth unmarred golden stone boxed in by high walls. There was no barrier between it and the cliff face below, one stumbling misstep between safety and death. 

The view of the desert beyond, with the wide-open sky, was unparalleled.

There, in that clearing, the Sun sat in a wicker chair, with Joe standing, stiff, at her side, occasionally speaking to her in a low murmur. 

Standing far off on the cliff wall was Andromache, her arms crossed. When she saw him and Booker approach she walked over to meet them, her eyes flickering over Nicky, troubled. 

There was no hiding now, any of their feelings or inclinations towards each other. The Moon had laid them all bare, flayed, wounded. It was terrifying, to be so vulnerable. 

He wanted to run _._

Then Joe turned his head, and his eyes flickered golden. Even from where Nicky was standing he could see the fresh burst of tears in them, glistening at the bottom of his lids.

Nicky couldn’t run to him, his body was frozen with an aching, breaking relief. He thought he might collapse. 

Thankfully, Joe was stronger. He broke from his place as sentinel and rushed right into Nicky’s arms, a low pitched moan emitting from his throat. He buried his face under Nicky’s neck where he most loved to be, and Nicky held him _tight._ If Joe was mortal he would have broken his bones.

Joe broke away far too soon. He looked _tired._ His skin was clammy, there were circles under his eyes, his robe was wrinkled and darkened with dirt. His hair had grown in the weeks they’d been parted, enough to be tied back low against his neck. A curl hung loosely above his brow, black and shiny. Nicky knew how it would feel, and the sound Joe would make should he tug on it. 

He knew ten thousand other things about him. So many new things to share and learn. 

But no, he must do this first.

Nicky sidestepped Joe entirely to face his mother. Nicky’s back to the cliff’s edge, he went down on a knee and bowed his head.

“My Lady,” he said, and willed his voice not to shake. “I cannot and could never express how sorry I am, on behalf of my family who have done you a thousand wrongs.”

He looked up. She looked as radiant as every time he’d seen her, gleaming and golden, all warm tones of brighter days, except for a bandage Nicky could see under her dress. There was a dark stain there that promised an open, unhealing wound.

In her final day she’d chosen a dress the color of sunflowers, pinned up at her neck with a black stone halter, it left her arms bare, her hands rested upon the arms of the chair. 

“I will not do you the dishonor of asking for forgiveness,” Nicky said. “But I offer my assistance, should you want it.”

Joe’s hand, gripping the headrest of her chair, was clenched and pale, Nicky didn’t dare to look him in the eyes. 

“Rise, Nicolo,” she said, her voice saturated and smooth as a sunrise. “You need not kneel. I would not ask that of the man my son loves.”

It was strange to hear someone else say it, blatantly, calm, like love was that easy to express. Love. The soul-tearing, laughter-like agony he felt every day he and Joe were parted, when Nicky thought him dead, and how it was magnified now that they were reunited. 

He looked to Joe who was watching them both, tears decorating his cheeks, he did not wipe them away. He did not even attempt to hide it. Nicky shouldn’t either.

“Take my hand, Nicolo,” she said, her palm turned upwards. 

Her hand was cold, so very cold, more-so than his own. He expected them to be like Joe’s, sun-bathed, like a lizard on a sunning rock, that lovely feeling one got just from basking. But they were like ice, he knew then it would not be long before she left them. 

“Yusuf, give us a minute alone.”

Joe looked panicked, hesitant to leave his mother’s side.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, and take Andromache and Sebastien with you. They’ve eavesdropped long enough on us.”

Joe bowed his head, going to leave. But then he stopped and before he could second-guess himself he cupped Nicky’s cheek with his hand. He took a moment to look at Nicky, rubbing his thumb in unconscious circles against soft skin before kissing him, gently, the gentlest ever. Then Joe walked away with Andromache and Booker. 

Lady al-Kaysani laughed at what Nicky assumed was the love-struck look on his face.

“He has waited a long time to be able to do that,” she said.

“We’ve kissed before,” he mumbled, fighting a blush.

“Not like that. In the light of day for all to see. It is a blessing often overlooked to love one so openly.”

He took his hand out of hers, rubbing along the wrist. No doubt he looked guilty, shameful of all the things he’d denied Joe for so long. 

“I took him for granted,” he said.

“No, child,” she reached out her hand as if to pull him back. “None of this is your fault. Or Yusuf’s. But ours, for teaching you such things.”

She sank back into the chair, looking very tired. “My stubbornness, and that of your mother, has caused more pain than it was worth. We spent years apart, over a pettiness of power, and it deprived you and Joe of one another.”

This time when she reached out with her hand Nicky took it. She squeezed him tight. “I am sorry for this, more than I could say.”

“No, no, no,” Nicky said, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his free arm. “My mother, her crimes are worse than yours. She would not even admit to her mistakes. I have—” He pulled away to reach under his jacket, and pulled out a sketchbook, worn, weathered, and slightly charred but it arose joyed recognition in her eyes anyway.

“She took this from you, it’s about time that it was returned to its owner.”

“ _Oh,_ ” the Sun said, taking the notebook with trembling hands. She opened the cover and thumbed through the pages with a nervous delicacy. She lingered on each and every page. Nicky had seen most of the book himself, guided by Cometa’s careful hands, or eyed secretly with his own in the corner of the library at the height of noon when there would be few to discover him.

And though he knew the pages well, she knew them better. She touched pages with a reverence he did not, and laughed more than a few times over sketches of Quynh, Andromache. Even some of his mother, young and happy in a way he could not imagine her.

Joe returned when she was about halfway through the book, alone. He watched from a distance, unsure of his welcome in their conversation, but Nicky waved him over. There was no one else better fit to be here. 

Joe practically plastered himself to Nicky’s side. Sliding an arm around Nicky’s waist from behind, resting a warm heavy hand on his hip. He pressed a kiss to the side of Nicky’s temple, lingering and nosing at his hair, breathing him in.

“Oh, Nicky,” he said eventually. “You brought it back.”

“Returned to its rightful owner,” Nicky said.

“I passed onto my son a skill of the soul,” she said, eyes trained firmly on the pages. “I only hope that he puts it to better use than I did.”

“Mama—” Joe started, as if to chastise her, but she clicked her tongue at him. 

“It has been ages since I put pen to paper,” she admitted. “I almost wish for a pen now, I find that inspiration has struck me again, seeing my old work.”

“I can get one for you,” Joe offered, quietly. 

“No.” She tugged Nicky, and thus, Joe, in close. “I would spend my last hours with my son and his heart.”

That struck a chord in Nicky, such a blatant limit on their time together. Joe was stiff at his side. 

“Are you sure there is nothing I can do, we can do, for you?” Nicky asked.

She patted the top of his hand, smiling. “You love my son,” she said. “I could ask no more of you.”

Joe came close and put a hand on her shoulder, she leaned into his touch. 

“You two are all that’s good of us,” she said. “You will lead these old dogs into a better time. Be better, is all I ask. Be better.”

Nicky leaned down and kissed the hands of the Sun, so unnaturally cold, so strangely pale. He stained them with a few errant tears. Joe was crying, he’d leaned in awkwardly over the back of the chair to hug his mother the best he could. His nose was in her hair and he was mumbling things Nicky couldn’t make out, grief and love and all the words released at the end of all days. 

Watching this, living in it _,_ this circle of love so strange but so wonderful, Nicky thought that as painful as this all was, it was a new start. The cycle of pain his mother, their mothers, all of them, had begun for no good reason. This was the renewal.

They would be better men, the mortals would say. 

Nicky would make sure of it.

~

When the Sun died, it was quiet, so much so that Nicky would not have noticed if it were not for Joe; who let out a cry when he realized she’d stopped breathing.

And then in the next second, before Nicky could really react or comfort, her body _dissipated_. 

Joe yelped and Nicky pulled him back into his arms. He heard Andromache say something from behind them, no doubt having come out with Booker, but he couldn’t look away from the chair where the body became _light._

It was a slow, sparkling spill into a river of gold, drenching the ground in yellow. It rose in the air and swirled all around them, caressing their skin, lingering in their hair. Joe trembled as it touched him. It spilled outwards down the cliffside and back to the palace where it sailed up the parapets, through the cracks in the walls, flying through the open windows. Out it went, past their land and into the desert, the world, where men would say the day was hot and bright and beautiful as it never had been before. The clouds that had marred the sky, the grief of her servants and guards vanished, and then there was not a cloud in the sky, not a ray unmarred. 

And though it was winter, there would be fruit on some trees, wheat in some fields, a few errant buds blossoming into flowers. 

They stayed there in the clearing, for an hour, maybe more, until the last bit of light left them. The sun set on the horizon, heralding the colors of dusk, of mourning. 

“Joe,” Nicky said, feeling him move away. But Joe was already running, pushing past Andromache and Booker in a mad dash to the bowels of the castle, its newly crowned king. 

~

“It’s an indescribable feeling,” Andromache said to him eventually. Nicky’s first instinct was to go after Joe, and offer whatever comfort he could, but there was a scent of power in the air, a new sparking kind of electricity. 

Joe was the Sun now. Such a transfer of power wasn’t easy. Nicky had no idea what that felt like. 

(Oh but he would, he would know soon _,_ sooner than he thought, sooner than he cared to address, there was still one god out there in need of _culling._

The desire was new and strange, but not unwelcome. Finally free, Nicky allowed himself to feel anger. It was intoxicating.) 

“The power?” Nicky asked, as it was on his mind.

“No,” she said. “Even now, with her gone, I find myself looking for her.”

“Such is grief,” Nicky said. He knew well enough of that. Cometa, a figure he saw in flashes between light. “It will linger.”

“And you should not,” she said.

He looked at her quizzically. 

“Go to your heart,” she said nodding at the castle. “You may lick your wounds in private, but Yusuf was never one to do so.”

“I thought he might want space—”

“Nicky,” Andromache sighed. “Though you and Joe are tied together, in ways I do not understand, you are not the same. Trust me, I’ve known him longer, he wants you there for all the ugly parts of himself. Especially so.”

Exposing himself in such a flayed, open way, even more than he already had today made Nicky’s skin crawl, but Andromache was right. That was _him._ Not Joe. He should not expect them to be mirrors of one another.

“Thank you,” he said to her, passing Booker who gave him a hard but encouraging look, on the way back to the palace.

He’d been here only once, that day so very long ago when he was young, and back then Nicky had not even seen the interior. But he followed the trail of power that Joe left behind. Eventually, he reached what must be Joe’s room. 

The door was flung open, like it had been done so in haste. Inside there was a smashed bottle of wine on the floor, shiny across the tiled floor. The balcony doors were open too, Nicky could see Joe’s form hunched over the balustrade. The sheer, pearl stitched curtains that hung off of the doors had been torn down. Nicky picked them up off the floor, folding them in his hands. There were multiple rips down the middle, torn apart, threads strung out, mangled. He set the curtains down on a chair and moved to Joe.

“I could _feel_ it,” Joe said. He wasn’t looking up, his head down between his arms, breathing hard. The air around him was vibrating, and though the day had long since passed into night the sky was lighter. As if the sun still shone on them all, even through the surrounding darkness. 

“Feel what?” Nicky asked.

“Her power, her _life,_ I could feel it pouring into me,” he croaked. Every word was tight with tears, even though Nicky could not see them. Blatant heartbreak, blatant sorrow. “I was taking her life, Nicolo. I didn’t want it, I didn’t.”

“Oh, Yusuf,” Nicky said. He placed his hand on Joe’s back, light, right in the center, just below the nape of his neck. He wasn’t sure of his welcome, he wasn’t sure of anything right now. It had been weeks since they were properly together in intimacy, every brush of skin, every gentle hand, was a sweet torture.

Joe didn’t respond, his head hung still between his arms. It was like the life had gone out of him, even as he’d gained more. Nicky was not surprised at this exchange of energy between Joe and his mother. It made sense. With the departure of the old, came the heralding of the new. There was a tie between a mother and son, a tie between gods. 

Nicky did not think he would be so distraught when his mother’s time came. 

Nicky rubbed his hand up and down Joe’s back in a soothing stroke, like calming a spooked horse. Though Nicky was hesitant his touch was welcomed; Joe untensed, slumping forward in a long, low moan. Relief or misery, Nicky could not tell, he could only move forward to catch Joe when he fell. Then they were huddled on the ground together.

“Nico, Nico, _Nico,”_ Joe was chanting into the warm crook of Nicky’s neck. He was crying and it felt warm, wet. A small heartbroken thunderstorm. 

He lifted his hands up in between their bodies and Nicky could see the small dancing flames running along the lines of his palms. Joe watched them, horrified, unable to make them stop.

“I’m here, my love, I’m here.” Nicky said, closing his hands over Joe’s fists. Joe made a distressed noise as Nicky’s hands burned, but Nicky could barely feel it, he forced himself not to. 

Nicky pressed a kiss to the warm skin of Joe’s temple, shushing him. Then he smoothed the many loose curls that hung just above Joe’s forehead into something more tamed, curling them behind Joe’s ear. It was more of a comforting gesture than anything else. Joe shivered when his fingers brushed the top of his ear, down to the side of his neck.

“I’m sorry,” Nicky whispered. “I’m so sorry, Yusuf. What can I do for you? Tell me.”

Joe pulled himself out from Nicky’s neck so that they were face to face. His eyes were red-rimmed and wet. There were creases on his cheeks from where he’d pressed in hard against Nicky’s shirt-collar. His beard was squashed down in some places, fluffed up in others. He looked wild, he looked a mess. He was beautiful. 

When Joe leaned in to brush their noses together, so tender and so sweet, Nicky couldn’t hold in his sob. Nicky _missed_ him.

“Kiss me,” Joe said, voice hoarse. “Kiss me, _ya amar_. I can’t think right now, I can’t. Please—”

Nicky surged forward. Their teeth clinked together on impact, but he didn’t care. He gritted himself through the initial awkwardness. That split second of adjustment where Nicky leaned back, Joe leaned forward, and then _ah,_ _there it was._

Nicky had his hands wrung tight in Joe’s curls, tugging at the back of his head, dragging him forward for _more, more, more_ , as close as he could get him. 

Joe was alternating between quick, furious pecks, biting little things that left Nicky hot, chasing Joe’s lips as he moved all over. Then he’d lick into Nicky’s mouth, slow and measured, but desperate all the same. The kind of kiss that set him on fire, Nicky felt like he was _melting._ He was dying in a fire, burning out. 

Nicky managed to direct Joe upwards with a tug to his hair and together they stumbled, connected by their hands, their mouths, from the balcony and into Joe’s room where Nicky pushed him onto the sheets and drew himself into his lap.

Joe’s hands grabbed his ass, squeezing and pulling Nicky in to grind against his dick. They were both hard. Nicky had never felt more alive.

“Yes,” Nicky hissed, grinding back into the firm hold of Joe’s hand. Joe had a finger brushing down his cheeks, teasing over his hole through the fabric. “Take what you need.” he begged.

“I need you.” Joe tugged at his ties on his shirt, but his hands were trembling. He growled, frustrated and Nicky shushed him. He leaned back, out of Joe’s reach so he could quickly undress. He pulled the shirt over his head, and shimmied out of his pants, crawling back into Joe’s lap bare. He cupped Joe’s cheeks and brought their foreheads together, breathing him in just for a moment, tempering their need.

Nicky needed to look at him, just for a moment, before this.

“I love you,” he said. He said it again. And again. He said it in a whisper between the surging kiss Joe placed on his lips. He said it through a loud moan, ringing through the room. He said it in all the languages he knew, the tongues of men morphed into a thousand different confessions, just for Joe to hear. He said them all. It was not enough. 

Joe grabbed him by the ass and flipped him over, taking one long moment to stare at Nicky bared, lit by nothing but the moonlight of which he was made. 

Joe froze, his eyes lingering over the scar on Nicky’s stomach. The sparks that had dimmed on his hands came back in a menacing glow at the sight of it, but Nicky hushed him and _glowed._

Joe sighed at the sight, mollified, and bent down to mouth at Nicky’s stomach, placing worshipful kisses over the bump of the wound before migrating down to his hip, the top of his thigh, skirting around Nicky’s dick, flushed and red.

Nicky threw his head back into the pillows, squeezing his eyes shut to stave off his release. Just the sight of Joe, bracketed between his thighs, rubbing his bearded cheek against the soft skin, had him on the edge.

When he calmed himself enough he looked back down to Joe, who had stripped in the meantime, and without any forewarning, took the head of Nicky’s dick in his mouth and sucked _,_ tonguing just beneath the head where Nicky was most sensitive.

Nicky whined, brought a fist to his mouth to stifle his cries, and bit down at the ridges of his knuckles to keep himself from thrusting and fucking Joe’s mouth. 

Joe pulled off. “No, be loud,” he said, tugging on Nicky’s arms to pull his fists away from his mouth. Joe placed them gently at the crown of his head when Nicky instinctively curled his fingers into the soft, springy hair. 

“Go ahead, _ya amar,_ ” Joe said, and it sounded like he was begging. He needed this just as much as Nicky was willing to give it. “You can take me too.”

Nicked nodded and when Joe swallowed him down a second time Nicky did not hold back his pleasure. He moaned so loud he swore the world could hear him, that everyone knew of him and his lover, fused in the night with their grief and their lust. He bunched his hands up in the lovely softness of Joe’s curls and kept him close to his dick, thrusting in small, eager bursts while Joe moaned and sucked. He pulled off to bite at the sensitive skin about Nicky’s hips, adorning his skin with deep, purple bruises, only to come back and suck him down again.

It was wonderful torture. It was sweet relief. Nicky had tears in his eyes. His skin shone blindingly bright.

He could feel himself on the edge, his breath coming out in breathy whispers. And Joe, the expert in all things Nicolo, pulled off just before his crest, leaving Nicky panting and flushed, unsatisfied but eager all the same. He rose from the bottom of the bed, breathing hard. His dick was hard and pointed up proudly against his belly. It would not take long for either of them, but tonight, Nicky knew, Joe wanted to savor every moment they had together. 

Joe fiddled around beneath the bed with his hand and emerged with a small glass vial of oil. He crawled up the bed to lay a dozen kisses on Nicolo’s lips, drawing them out into something with teeth, something feral, lighting Nicky up into an impatient set of whining-growls. 

Nicky heard the pop of a cork, and with one hand Joe threw Nicky’s thigh over his hip, exposing his ass to the air. 

Nicky drew him in close from the back of his head until they were forehead to forehead. And when Joe drew a slicked up finger over the furl of his hole he breathed a pleading “yes” into Joe’s mouth. 

Joe stretched him quickly with two fingers, long, drugging strokes just edging over that treasured spot that had Nicky howling, his nails digging into Joe’s back just to hold on, to his sanity or his pleasure he could not say.

“Joe, please,” Nicky begged when Joe slid in a third finger. They’d done this often enough that he knew, Joe knew, Nicky could take it. “You tease me _._ ” 

“No,” Joe said with a hard nip to Nicky’s jawline. “I am drinking you in.” He curled his fingers, _just so,_ and Nicky’s head dropped back on a groan, leaving his bared throat to Joe’s mercy. 

“It has been too long,” Joe said into his neck. “Too long. Too long.” His kisses were absent-minded, he thrusted with an intentful purpose to drive Nicky mad, but kissed with a need for comfort. 

“I will not be parted from you,” Joe confessed, like it was something shameful. A weakness that he would admit only when it was Nicky who could see and hear it. Nicky knew, he knew and understood.

_You are my last. You are my only. I cannot bear this burden without you. We are two sides of a war I will no longer fight. I love you more than any barrier brought between us._

“No,” Nicky agreed, breathless. Joe pulled his fingers away and slicked himself up. Nicky grabbed Joe’s face with both hands and drew him down so that he lay, heavy and full, against the long lines of Nicky’s body.

Joe slid into him with one slow, easy thrust, Nicky grunted with it, the sudden overwhelming sense of being filled. He bore down to draw Joe in further. 

He urged Joe on, dragging his nails down his back to his ass to pull him in closer with each hard thrust. It was a frantic pace. Raw need, raw adoration, Joe whispered pet names into Nicky’s ear as he undid him.

Joe shoved in hard only to make his next thrust shallow and teasing, pulling out just barely and grinding deep. Nicky pulled at Joe’s hair in turn, tugging at the roots and pushing back when Joe thrust forward. He gave just as good, fought just as hard, they were a sweaty, writhing mess. The sheets curled up against them, tangled and damp.

Nicky pushed at Joe then, and without a word they separated, only for Nicky to turn on his knees. He glanced over his shoulder to catch Joe’s eyes. 

Nicky’s eyes shone bright as stars. His skin, pearl-like and shimmering in his god-form, he could feel the moon outside glowing as if polished. He was going to vibrate out of his own body, maybe the moon would shatter in turn.

Joe looked just as desperate, just as eager to touch. His hands were like hot brands over Nicky’s skin, each brush of his fingertips made Nicky’s skin burn. When Nicky surged up to kiss him his eyes were a glimmering gold, leaking power, the air shimmering with it. 

Joe drew his way up Nicky’s bare backside, kissing every stray beauty mark as he went until he lined his dick up again and slid back in, easy as breathing. With his mouth at Nicky’s nape, biting up a storm, he pounded down _hard._

Nicky had half a thought of sympathy to any servants in the halls, there was no doubt in his mind they could hear him. He did not think about it more than that, he could barely breathe for the fire lighting up his spine. Joe a hot line of warmth up his back, inside him. 

Joe brought him up to his chest as he approached his peak. Nicky tangled one of his hands in Joe’s hair to keep him close to kiss, but it was barely more than that. They panted, open-mouthed against each other’s lips, with the occasional brush of tongue, a whispered devoted word.

He tangled his other hand with Joe’s and brought it down to his dick, leaking against his belly. 

“Yes, yes,” Nicky chanted as they stroked together. Joe’s thrusts increased in sharpness, he was so close. He squeezed tight, he wanted Joe there, he wanted to feel his release. 

But Joe brought him there first. With one expert stroke against the head, whispering love in Nicky’s ear and he was done. Nicky fell slack against Joe’s chest, his head resting in the crook of his shoulder and came, spurting thick across Joe’s hands and onto the sheets.

Joe grunted at the sight, and thrust fast, once, twice, before biting down onto the meat of Nicky’s shoulder, pushing himself inside as deep as he could get. Nicky felt him come, spilling hot and thick inside before he and Nicky fell forward onto the bed.

Nicky watched him roll over on his back, eyes trained on the canopy of the bed, his chest rising and falling as he caught his breath. Joe blinked hard for a moment, and a stray tear trailed down from his eye. He squeezed them shut again and threw an arm over his eyes with a moan. 

Nicky crawled up to him, prying his arm away.

“Joe, my love. How can I help? Tell me.” Joe ruled over the day now. He was more powerful than most, more powerful than Nicky. Nicky didn’t care what he was. He didn’t care what he was _supposed_ to be. Nicky saw only the man he loved in tears, full of joy and sorrow, for the mother he lost and the lover he'd won in turn.

Was Nicky enough in exchange for this grief? 

“Come here, Nicolo,” Joe said, his voice a raspy, choked thing. “Hold me, please.”

Nicky settled himself into the cradle of Joe’s arms, wrapped his own beneath Joe’s back and the bedsheets, bracketing him into the mattress. He clung to him tight and pressed frequent kisses to the bare skin he could reach.

He did not leave. He did not separate from him. He remained there until dawn, while Joe slept in disturbed bursts. He watched the morning sun come in through the window and imagined it redder in mourning, a fitful, angry color.

~

Nicky, for all that he’d snuck around in the awkward fits of daytime, was still not used to waking and functioning while the sun shone. And with the exhaustion of the past day laid heavy on him, he slept until well past noon.

He woke, and Joe was not there.

He stretched a frantic hand out to the spot where Joe had slept and found it still relatively warm from his body. He would have left the bed within the hour.

Nicky jumped out from bed and slid on one of the stray robes thrown on one of the chairs. It was slightly big on him, broad in the shoulders where Nicky’s form slimmed, but he didn’t mind. He relished in walking out the bedroom doors in Joe’s yellow patterned robe. Past the guards, who eyed him with the faintest hint of surprise.

Everyone knew now. With certainty, Nicky would no longer deny what he and Joe were to one another.

He made his way to the throne room, but rounding the corner found himself face to face with Andromache in full leather armor.

“Ah,” Andromache said. She smirked, giving him a once over. “I was just about to come and wake you.”

“Seems like a rather menial task for you, Andromache.”

She cocked her head, a quizzical smile on her face. “Not when Joe asked me. This is his house, I should do as he bids.”

Nicky snorted. “You have done as you wished, that will not change when the crown changes heads.”

“Perhaps not,” Andromache said. “But I would gladly perform a favor for a friend.”

She was extending her peace. Andromache was never his friend, but she could be. And Nicky did not hate her, whatever hostility he had before was an extension of his mother’s, he was aware enough to know that. 

“Take me to him,” Nicky said to her with a firm nod. “Please.”

Joe had, characteristically, spent his first day as king of the waking day, out in the garden courtyard by the fountain wearing nothing but a pair of peach-colored pants. 

There was no crown upon his head, a stranger could have taken him for a servant from a distance. But here, with the sunlight trickling in warm and waned, somehow soft with grief, Nicky thought Joe as nothing but regal. He was beautiful, he was kind, when he looked up from where he was twirling his finger about in the fountain playing with the guppies his face dropped into relief. 

Could a god be good? Well, Joe would be.

Nicky walked to him with a hand outstretched and tangled their fingers together as he sat down. Joe gave him a tight squeeze and leaned in to kiss his temple, lingering for just a second longer than appropriate. He turned to Andromache.

“What is there to be done?” he asked.

“You are in full power now,” she said without a misstep. “I’m sure you can feel it. It’s overwhelming but you’ll get used to the feeling. But you will need that potency if we are to continue this war.”

Nicky scowled. “We don’t have a choice. We have to.”

Joe shook his head, rubbing over the top of Nicky’s hand with his thumb. “We are only defending ourselves at the moment, I am hesitant to antagonize the Stella any further should we want them to rally to your side.”

Joe sighed and for the first time in a while looked at Nicky as if he was afraid of what he would say.

“If they don’t… much will be lost.”

Nicky nodded. A part of him wanted to pull away from Joe’s touch, but he pushed it down. He wasn’t angry at him. He simply felt resigned. Here were the crossroads of his legacy.

“Nicky I—” Joe paused, for a man so fluent in language he was at a loss for words. “I don’t want you to be pressured. This is not a decision you must make right this moment. You must think this over. Do not—” He brought Nicky’s hands up to his mouth to kiss, his eyes squeezed shut tight. 

“Take time to decide.”

Nicky couldn’t look at him, skies above, it hurt to look at him. He rose from the fountain’s rim where they sat and bent down for a feather-quick kiss to Joe’s forehead. It was all he could bear. 

“Take me to Quynh,” he said to Andromache. “I have business to settle.”

~

To walk into the palace of the seas was no easy feat.

Impossible for a mortal. To move that much water, or to hold their breath for that long. It couldn’t be done. But Andromache was old and her knowledge priceless.

She led him to the shore, that same beach on which Quynh had taken him as a child, playing in the coves where he made little waves. 

“So what now?” he asked Andromache drily. They were standing at the edge of the surf, seafoam coming up to their boots, then skittering back out with the tide.

“Move it,” she said, like it was simple.

“The _ocean_? Andromache, as I’m sure Quynh has told you, I have some command over her domain but not enough to part the sea.”

“You did not before,” Andromache said firmly. “Not as a child, and not as who you are now. The Moon in full.”

He shot her a sharp look. He was no such thing. In fact, the reminder of such was still held up in the castle with her war plans, the blood of many fresh and dripping onto her floor. 

“My mother is not dead yet,” he snapped at her.

“No, but does it matter?” She pointed to the sea. 

“How will I know the way?”

“You’ll know,” she said, unbothered and as helpful as ever. 

There was no swaying her, Andromache was as stubborn and unbending as the mountains of which she commanded. And Nicky… he had to do this.

First, he waded into the water. He could not do this from the shore, dry and bare from the seawater. He planted his feet as firmly as he could, sinking into the wet sand. Then, pushed his hands down, palms towards the water and aimed his head skyward to the light of the moon above him.

He closed his eyes and breathed in. Deep. He felt for the light on his face, the cold light of the moon. White and clear and calm. A clean slate. It was a funnel for him. A diamond-point of energy. The edge of his sword. 

He felt for the tides with it, he felt for the rhythm of the sea, the natural push and pull. He tugged at it, like a harpist with their strings. 

He moved his wrist out, bent, like a dancer, like a wave.

And the sea parted.

He opened his eyes to a _roar_ of water, the wet squelching of sand suddenly displaced, a seabed exposed to open air, the flapping of fish and squid and small squirmy things set upon with air. Some of them thrashed and died, a few were lucky to dance their way back into the pocket of water he held back with his hands.

He was sweating _,_ it took everything he had to hold the water back and he still had to go further. 

Then, there upon his shoulder was Andromache’s hand, firm. He turned his head as much as he dared without breaking concentration.

“I imagine Quynh kills less fish when she does this,” he said to her, an attempt at humor.

Andromache broke out into a wide trickster’s grin. “Oh, Quynh wouldn't hurt a fly.” 

She nudged him forward, impatient and encouraging but he also felt better _._ After the first few steps, where his feet felt like stone, heavy as the world, he began to walk with ease again.

He realized that Andromache was sharing her power with him.

He waded them out past the cove and with a twirl and a flick of his hand curled the water over their heads into an enclosed air pocket. They were in a bubble underwater and everything went dark.

He did not know where to go. But Andromache said he would. He would know. 

Even down here, Nicky could feel the presence of the Moon. The Moon was _him._ There was no denying that. His mother couldn’t do this. She no longer had such power.

He took in a breath, holding it, and when he breathed out his skin flickered, brightened, and shifted into crystal white. Glowing.

And with that, the sudden burst of light, _his_ light, he could see the things in the water, the fish and the seafloor. Crabs and flounder, snails and shrimp huddled underneath rocks, the curling edge of an octopi’s tentacle edging against the bubble for a grab at his foot.

He saw… a road. 

Seaworn, and made with what Nicky assumed was some kind of volcanic rock, to withstand the salt and the rolling tides. 

He shifted the bubble to its path and led Andromache down further, shining bright.

~

Quynh was prepared and Nicky expected nothing less from her. 

The long black road down into the sea was a winding, treacherous thing. With only Nicky’s light that guided them, and more than once he caught a glimpse of a shadow in the water beyond. Mammoth, accompanied with a burst of rushing current outside of their bubble. There were dark creatures down here in the trenches. He hoped that it was Quynh who commanded them, and stayed their hunger.

Nicky was instead more concerned with the growing number of guards posted along the road, motionless in an aquatic looking fashion. They were humanoid, with frills and gills at their necks, colored like sand or coral or dark, grainy rock the further down they went. 

They did not move, but followed Nicky and Andromache with their eyes, and occasionally made a clicking sound in their throats.

Nicky and Andromache were headed on a downward slope, and it was getting harder and harder for Nicky to hold their bubble aloft, with the water pressure increasing over their heads. The power Andormahe was sharing with him through his shoulder had kept him going thus far, but Nicky did not know if he could make it to wherever Quynh’s homestead was.

It turned out that they were closer than he thought.

They’d descended down into a trench, far enough from the surface the moonlight could not penetrate, but far enough up from the deepest part of the ocean that still some greenery, blue-green colored algae and thick seagrass, grew. The walls of the trench were black, layers upon layers of thick basalt, morphed between ink-colored and a soft powder gray. 

And eventually, carved into it, windows.

Some of them were open, and Nicky thought at first for them to be holes, imperfections in the stone, or blasted out by some creature in need of a home. And maybe some of them were, originally, but as Nicky turned up his light, and he could see some of the soldiers, and what he assumed were Quynh’s other members of court coming in and out of them. Doorways as well then. There were quite a few people he spotted simply existing through a rock-hole, a soft greenish glow emanating from the inside, illuminating sleeping figures, children playing… families in motion.

Andromache was looking at it all with a child-like wonder, something he’d never seen on her before. She was just as surprised as she was. The peacefulness of this place, the homes. This was not their courts. The rigidity, the air of war always lingering. Somehow this was separated.

Quynh had kept them hidden.

More soldiers were pouring out of the windows, the holes, growing more extravagant in style. Arches made of abalone, plazas smoothed out under an overhang of rock, curtained in glowing seaweed and crops of red and yellow tubeworms. Storefronts carved into the bottom of the trench, full of sea-blown glass and stone carved trinkets. A market. There were strings of colored plankton hung between the two trench walls, a guide to light the pathway.

Soon, Nicky and Andromache were surrounded, circled in by soldiers, but also townspeople _._ Strange and curious, with webbed hands and feet, the face of a fish, hands fashioned into flippers. Peculiar and strange, he knew that if the humans were to see them they would be cursed, burned, hunted.

_Heaven and Earth, Quynh was saving these people. This is why, this is why._

A man came forward, human-looking, with black skin. He had more elaborate furnishings on his uniform, marking him as a commander.

“Lykon,” Andromache gasped.

“Hello, Andromache,” the man, Lykon, said, inclining his head and Nicky recognized him from the few pages of the book he’d been featured in. This was Quynh’s head man. He stepped toward the edge of their bubble, pressing a hand to the surface, slipping in, and suddenly he was inside their sanctuary. He could breathe air, apparently. 

“Lower your shields, young Moon,” he said to Nicky, his voice was accented, muffled in a way that indicated he didn’t use it often. “I will grant you and Andromache walking presence here.”

He came over and brushed his finger over each of their foreheads, leaving what felt like a wet, sticky smear behind. Then, the bubble collapsed around them.

Nicky grabbed onto Andromache, hard as he could, they were going to _drown._ But when the water rushed in and over them like a caress. And without even thinking, he opened his mouth. Instead of the water rushing in, choking, he could simply breathe around it.

Andromache was sheet-white behind him, hands to her own throat.

Lykon was smirking. “Have you lost trust in me?”

Andromache swallowed, took her hands from her throat like it was on fire and smoothed down the front of her shirt. Nicky couldn’t see well enough to know if she was blushing, but he wouldn't be surprised. 

“It has been a long long time,” Andromache said. “So you’ll excuse my misgivings.”

“Yes, it has,” Lykon said, looking sad. He clicked, high-pitched, a command meant for his soldiers who began pushing the crowd back.

“Come,” he said. “I will take you to Lady Quynh.”

~

Quynh did not live in a palace or a manor or a castle. She lived in a private room in the barracks of her soldiers. At the back, guarded by two of her creatures. A plain room. Bigger than the rest, Nicky thought, but otherwise all the same.

Lykon escorted them inside, with a greeting to Quynh before leaving. She was seated at a raised gray table made of stone. Reading through a book. How the pages weren’t wet Nicky had _no clue,_ she thumbed through them with ease. And only once Andromache cleared her throat did she lookup.

“Took you long enough,” she said, closing the book with a loud thump.

“Excuse me?” Andromache asked.

“You should have been here weeks ago,” Quynh said, rising from the desk and moving out towards one of the three open windows. They were draped in a sheer curtain, so she could see outside. “I thought you’d come for me before Joe took over. But better late than never I suppose. You’ve caused a ruckus down at the market for sure.”

“Quynh,” Nicky said. She was so… blase about all of this. “We didn’t know this was _here._ ”

“I know. I didn’t want you to. But I knew when the time came that one of you would find it.”

“Quynh.” It was Andromache. The most choked-up Nicky had ever heard her before. “Is this why… I thought you were just being stubborn.”

Quynh’s eyes were soft, forgiving, very much what Andromache needed.

“No, that was your calling card, my love. I only sought to protect these people from everything,” she said. “I saw what the Moon did to her own court. I would not have mine subjected to anything similar. I’m sorry… for hiding it.”

Andromache was practically thrumming with the need to go to her, Nicky didn’t even have to look at her to know. It was that same relief he felt, seeing Joe for the first time, with a bridge finally strung again between them. 

Quynh walked over to them, took Andromache’s hand in for a kiss, just over the knuckles. It seemed to placate her. 

“Nicky,” she said. “I hope you understand my hesitance. I hope you both do. But I want to extend my own cause for support. I wanted to protect my people, who would so easily be destroyed had your mother known of their existence. I didn't want them dragged into a war. But I know now that hiding… that won’t solve anything either. I would fight for more than just myself, but for all of you. And the happiness you deserve.”

Quynh smiled at him, rare and treasured, he had not been offered one so true since he was a child, curled up against her knees in the beach coves scared of a moving puddle of salt water. 

“You and Joe, together there is nothing you could not accomplish. And with us?” She nodded to Andromache. “There are no limits.”

“I need you to come back,” he said. “I need a show of force against my mother. For whatever that may end in.”

“You might have to kill her,” she said, ever the realist.

He glanced at Andromache, her words echoing back to him from that day in the grotto, “I know.”

Her smile twitched, the only small indication of her hesitance. She cupped his cheek, a reassurance. 

They were the only two in the world, who would feel some grief on Lady di Genova’s parting. It was impossible not to. 

Here was what Nicky had learned, and what he now realized, at the bottom of the ocean with the woman who was more mother to him than anyone else had ever been.

Family was too often a cycle of grief. Pain in different turns dealt by familiar hands. And no, no matter what you thought, it is not deserved or merited. 

Real family ached and waned, but acted as a bruise. Hard to banish, quick to form, but always healing. 

No one who loved you would ever choose to cause you pain. 

~

He left Andromache there with her. He knew they needed some time alone, to hash out the rest of whatever they were to become between them alone. He had no doubt of their place in his war, but first, peace with each other was more important. 

Lykon escorted him back to the surface. They emerged out onto the beach and Nicky was surprised to see it had been no more than a few hours since he’d been down there. 

The sun, in piercing irony, was just beginning to peek over the horizon across the sea.

“We will meet you at Nile’s river in four days,” Lykon said. 

“Good. Thank you, Lykon. For everything.”

Lykon cocked his head. “You were not what I expected.”

“What?”

“From her,” he said. “I have met your mother only a few times, and each was an experience I care not to repeat. You are better than what I expected, as her son,” he clarified.

It was a compliment and it wasn’t. He was stating his stance, his side. And it was not surprising for Nicky to hear. It only strengthened his resolve. 

“I was not always as such,” Nicky admitted. “I have hurt those I love. I have been selfish. But I have tried to make myself better.”

“That is more than most of us do,” Lykon said. “And an admirable quality in a leader. You will be a good one.”

He offered his hand for Nicky to shake, and then he waded back into the water and was gone.

Nicky stayed by the shore, just beyond the reach of the white waves, until the sun made itself a home in the sky. Burning a bright, butter yellow. He let it guide him up the cliffs, and beyond.

~

Nicky could not call the Sun palace home, but it was comforting. Mostly because Joe was there.

Never before had he existed with his love, day and night, minute in and minute out. 

Joe was adjusting well to his new charge, but Nicky never doubted him for that. His home was always kind, his people loved him, there were few dark corners to hide in.

Joe still slept at night, when Nicky was most awake and aware. If Nicky was at home, he would be performing his duties, but he found himself adrift. Without a cause to command, or people to direct. He was a leader in whatever this was, but Joe had most of it covered. 

Nicky didn’t want to step on his toes, no so early on, when Joe was still getting used to being in charge.

He must not have been hiding his troubles as well as he wished. 

A pair of arms wrapped themselves around his waist, and Nicky could not resist leaning back into Joe’s embrace, where he tucked his nose against the side of his cheek. Joe’s beard tickled at the bottom of his lip.

“You’re distracted,” Joe said after a while.

“Huh? Oh.” Joe had a hand, teasing at the waistband of his sleep-pants. A flirtation and invitation if Nicky ever saw one. But he wasn’t hard, he didn’t feel anything really but a lingering dread, balmed only slightly by Joe’s presence. 

“I’m sorry, I just… It’s different, being here,” Nicky said, pressing a chaste kiss to Joe’s cheek in apology.

“No need to be sorry,” Joe said. He’d pulled his hand away from Nicky’s groin and traced it up and down the side of his ribs instead.

“Different in a good way? Or bad?” Joe asked.

“Both, I suppose. I’m happy. I want you to be sure of that. But this is not my land. My people. I feel adrift.”

Joe hummed an affirmation. He walked back inside from where he’d been leaning against the door to the balcony, and guided Nicky down into bed. Nicky wouldn’t sleep, but Nicky would lay with Joe until he did. 

Joe laid down on his back, and Nicky stayed seated, curled over him like a flower laden with dew. Joe had one hand stretched up, playing with the long strands of Nicky’s hair. 

“All of this is new. To me, and to you. I do not think that feeling will fade anytime soon,” Joe said, slurred slightly on sleep. He’d been working all day. Organizing his soldiers. Making sure their provisions were ready for tomorrow. Should it come to battle. 

“Not even after tomorrow?” Nicky whispered. Joe’s fingertips were on his nose, tracing, loving, then halting.

They stayed there while he thought, absorbing what Nicky had said.

“What do you think is going to happen tomorrow?” Joe asked. He had not moved his fingers.

“I think I’ll have to kill my mother.”

Joe moved them away. His brow was furrowed, and he looked sad.

“Do you want to?”

_Did he?_

“I have to.”

“Nicky,” he surged up so that he was sitting, and they were face to face. “This is not required of you. No matter what anyone else may have told you.”

“It’s poetic,” he barked a rough laugh, humorless. “A fitting ending, I think.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Joe nudged his nose against Nicky’s shoulder. “After all you’ve been through if what you wanted to do was put your sword through her heart I would gladly watch and cheer as you do it. But that is not the only option. She may not be your family anymore… but she is still something to you.

“Nicolo.” Joe was so close that they were brushing foreheads. “You are too good a person to feel nothing about this.”

There was the hard part, identifying his feelings. The knotted, gnashing thing in his gut ever since his mother gutted Cometa in the throne room. The initial fury that came with bloodlust and the need for revenge. Tempered by what everyone expected him to do with it. Nicky could kill her; he knew he could. 

How would he feel after?

“She deserves what she gets,” Nicky spat, and meant it. 

“Every bit of it,” Joe agreed. “But you don’t have to be the executioner.”

No, he did. It was only right, all the injustices done, all the pain and separation. It was wrong, he’d been treated wrongly. Wouldn’t all his pain go away after he did it? Wasn’t this supposed to be catharsis? 

“Okay, okay, my love,” Joe said, after a while, keen on his distress. He pulled Nicky to lay down. Nicky wasn’t responding, he didn’t really know how. And he didn’t think he would tomorrow. No matter what he did, he would always have an eye down the other path, wondering.

“You should rest,” Joe said, fitting himself into a long curve around Nicky’s back. “Even if you can’t sleep.” 

Nicky tugged Joe’s arm over his side, to hold him close, as much as he possibly could be. 

He did not sleep. He stayed awake throughout the entirety of the night. He did not move. He counted Joe’s breaths, to keep himself from screaming. 

~

The sight of four armies together was a marker for the ages.

Joe’s was the biggest, as the Sun was the oldest. Joe’s warriors were awash in a sea of white and gold, with sparkling round shields, and two regiments split between spears and scimitars as a weapon of choice, followed by a smaller section of cavalry led by Joe.

Andromache and Nile came with their own reinforcements, joined by a determined-looking Booker, meeting them at the dreaded meadow that Nicky could not escape from. A keeper of hauntings and pleasantries.

Nicky wanted to laugh, that the war front had been pushed back here. 

Andromache’s people were horse people, people of the Earth and the grass. They rode with her in a thunderous welcoming, hooting and hollering for battle, their skin shining red and pink in the Sun.

Nile’s court had grown since he’d last seen her, but they were a fierce group. Armed in the shortsword and the bow. 

Nile greeted him with a smile, and a hug, to Nicky’s welcome surprise. She remembered him fondly, and grinned wide at seeing him and Joe riding in together, so blatantly close.

Nicky worried that Quynh and Lykon would not make good on their promise, sitting anxiously in the long pause between the arrival of Andromache and Nile. 

But then came the sound of marching feet from the north. 

His heart rose.

Then a similar sound from the east.

Almost simultaneously, Quynh and Lykon emerged from the eastern border of the clearing with their foot soldiers in tow as did Lady di Genova and the Stella come from the North, her army looking so small compared to their combined forces.

At the sight of Quynh, Nicky could feel a flash of inquiring power from his mother, followed by rage, as Quynh marched her men into a position of attack against her. 

The armies came to a stop. The field suddenly silent but for the few errant snorting of horses. 

Nicky and Joe urged their horses forward together. They broke off from the army, and after a long moment, Nicky’s mother came too from the other side.

They met in the middle. 

“Who was it that got you out, Nicolo?” his mother hissed. Her voice was jarring after what felt like so long without hearing it. 

“My friends,” he said, unwilling to give her anything more.

“Protecting them even now?” she said. “It won’t matter what you tell me. This is a battlefield. Blood will be spilt. It is of no consequence of who or when.”

“You are so sure of yourself that war is what this will come to,” Joe sneered.

“Is that not why we’re here?” She didn’t even look at him as she said it, her eyes on Nicky.

“We are here to stop a charade you have been putting on for too long,” Nicky said. “You are alone. There is no one here to support you.”

“I don’t need it,” she snapped. 

“Even Gods cannot exist in isolation. What man would pray to you now, that you’ve destroyed their land and livelihood?” Nicky said. Then, he dismounted. He could hear Joe’s sharp intake of breath, but he remained on his horse, watching them with an eagle’s eye. 

His mother came down to join him. They were only a sword’s length apart but never had Nicky felt so far away from her. She looked older, aged as she’d ever been. There were lines of gray in her long dark hair, the armor hid everything else, but he could see the lines in her face, the way her cheeks sagged, sallow. She was worn, and waning, her midnight armor did her a disservice. It looked too big for her.

“Enough of this,” Nicky said. “Enough. What do you think will become of us if you win?”

“I think I will be left in peace, as I’d been so before,” his mother said.

“But we weren’t!” Nicky was shouting at her, his temper slipping, and she wouldn’t like that. She’d see it as a weakness. But he couldn’t help it. He was thinking of the notebook hidden in the library, now rightfully returned. The way they were before, no matter how it came about, and how his mother was the one who insisted on preserving this _afterness_ of isolation. 

“You lived free and happy, I saw it! I know. I was told the truth that you were so insistent on hiding from me.”

“I hid nothing,” she said. “Whatever Andromache and Quynh have told you is deception. They paint those days in a lie. Not everything was so happy. Our lives were not so even.”

Nicky shook his head. “Even so, it was better than this.”

She was silent for a long moment. Behind them both, there was the cry of horses, the low murmur of nervous soldiers.

“I blame you,” his mother said. The air had gone cold. 

“What?” Behind him, Joe had turned his horse around and was shouting for Andromache.

“I blame you, your nature. I could not fix you, though I tried. I raised you as I should, yet look where you are. Look where you stand Nicolo.” She curled her fingers and spread her feet wide. Ice began creeping out across the grass.

“Stop.”

“You are so fragile, you won’t kill me. You don’t have it in you.” Behind her the Stella started a march forward, the roar of a thousand feet in time. 

“You don’t know what I have in me,” Nicky shot back, more determined than he felt, he pulled his sword out, backpedaling even though he could hear the sound of his own armies advancing. Maybe they’d trample them both, save Nicky the trouble. 

“Oh Nicolo, I’m in you.” She shot to the left, a hand outstretched. She was aiming for Joe, who Nicky realized had circled back to gather his guard and whirled back with the momentum of a galloping horse.

The horse shrieked and was frozen. Joe was thrown to the ground, landing hard on his shoulder. The Moon moved for him, but Nicky was there with his sword out, light pulsing into the metal and he screamed, pushing her back.

Then the armies were upon them.

It was all sound. So loud Nicky thought himself deafened until he adjusted. There were bodies and horses. The plumes of energy he could feel spread out through the field that he knew were Andromache, Quynh, Booker, Nile. 

He couldn’t hear, but he had vision for only one. He swung at his mother with blasts of light thrust into his sword, he beat her back with one stroke and Joe came in for the next with fire licking at the grass, chasing away her frost.

She soon recovered, and in came the Stella who powered through to Joe and Nicky without regard for their own life. Running full tilt on their horses only to explode into fire before the young gods. Joe did his best to shield Nicky, but the fires were hot and desperate. And she kept sending her soldiers on.

It was a coward’s way out, the way she danced behind the flames of the soldiers she sent to death. She watched Joe throw up wall after wall of flame to keep the Stella back, Nicky’s sword singing through the fire to take down those he could. It was too much, too much. Nicky was tiring, and Joe’s fires falling faster.

But then, Quynh. 

A burst of salt in the air, and from beyond the crackling sound of an inferno, Nicky heard water. 

Her horse burst into view, running in a blur, making circles around where the Moon had trapped them. Water seeped out of the ground and dimmed the fires down, just enough for Nicky and Joe to run through without burning themselves.

And run they did, right at where his mother had retreated to the outskirts of the field.

They came at her as one. Nicky went forward and Joe went back. The Moon raised her sword to meet theirs and met a double-powered force. They were too fast for her, too angry, too eager for it to be over.

Then Nicky had enough, shouting at Joe to stop. Nicky made himself glow, as bright as he ever could, sucking the power from the sky, from his _mother,_ blinding her as she fell.

Before she could stand, he had his boot on her chest and his sword by its side. 

And all the sound faded away once more,only his breathing, coming in quick sharp pants. His hair fell down in damp flyaways over his forehead while he stared into the eyes of his mother. Her face was dirty with mud, he could barely see her moon-pale skin. Only her eyes, still green, still as bright as they had always been. 

Nicky had her pinned, but he could not force the tip of his blade through her. The armor wasn’t the issue, this was a matter of soul. He wanted to kill her, but he couldn’t, and he was so _tired._

And then Joe was behind him, slick with war-wounds and a palette of blood so mixed, Nicky could not tell who he killed to get here, and he came and put his hand on the pommel of Nicky’s sword. He laced his fingers with Nicky’s and spit on the ground by the Moon’s head, ferocious, angry, loathing.

They pushed in together right through the heart of her, energy pulsing through their hands and into the sword, and into the blade, and into the metal, and into the flesh, a slow death, long enough to feel a lifelong pain and then it killed her.

Her eyes never left his face. Stared, dimmed, then went out. 

And then her body, like the Sun before her, dissolved, into a pool of silver stars.

It rose up into the wind, and into him.

In through his chest, he could feel the power Joe described, cloyingly sweet, thick like bile in the back of his throat. He wanted to crouch and heave it all out but more was coming, more was coming.

He collapsed onto the ground, his mouth open but there was no sound coming out. A hand clenched to his chest where the magic flowed like a tether pulled taut. He felt and watched the tears come down his cheeks and fall onto the dirt. 

It felt like ages, but when it was done, he could stand. 

Joe was there to catch him when he stumbled, he always would be. Nicky leaned into him. Joe was whispering praise, comfort, but Nicky could make so little of it out. His head was swimming, everything was muffled yet focused at the same time.

This was his power, the full extent.

He nudged Joe away, to stand by himself. He stood straight and tall and it was only when he looked out to the field did he realize the fighting had stopped. The remaining Stella were gathered in close, their faces drawn to him, smiles wide upon their faces.

Quynh had dismounted and was leaning hard against her horse, exhausted but smirking. Andromache, Nile, Booker and the rest behind her, scattered between the imprints on the ground where a body had fallen, then faded.

The sky above him was dark, but he could see so clearly. Only then did he realize his skin was shining.

Clean and clear and unmuted. A mirror to the moon above him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come check me out on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/1derspark)!
> 
> And as always comments and kudos are appreciated and feed the beast :)


	9. Epilogue

They are married in the grove Nile gave them, and spend the rest of the night celebrating in their field of wildflowers.

It felt like the night of Nile’s masquerade ball, just as jovial, just as bubbly, only they were all unmasked and bared to the night sky. Shimmering and wonderful, there were so many stars, the moon was so bright.

The Stella floated about the field, their cheeks ruddy with drink and good company. They intermingled with Joe’s court, brightest of them all, in the field in their white and gold robes. Andromache’s people had huddled around the barrels of ale singing some bawdy songs in time with the music. 

Nile’s fledgling companions were making themselves at home with a few of Quynh’s newcomers, who were interspersed between the crowd, clutching nervously at their cups. Still, the river people and the sea people seemed to be getting along well, and Lykon was there with his handsome face and smile, smoothing over any uncertainty with that charming way of his. 

There were conversation and wine and food, there was no fighting, only joy and Nicky thought he might cry for all of it.

Even though it may have been his own wedding party, he still lingered, separated from the various groups. There was a large bonfire in the center of the field, dug into a pit in the ground. Nicky was sad to see the grass go when they dug it, but Joe pointed out that one day they might dig more of it up. To lay down foundations, a new castle for them both, unhaunted by the ghosts of the last.

Nicky had already kissed the man more times than he could count today, but he could not resist kissing him again just for that. 

He was standing off to the side, watching a couple of fireflies blink lazily as they flew around his outstretched fingers. Every time one was brave enough to land on his skin, he smiled.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you play with fireflies.” Quynh sauntered over with a mug of spiced wine in her hands. 

“It’s been a long time since I let myself do it,” he said. He lifted his hand up and the fireflies traveled up his fingers before bursting out into the air, to drift away, floating to the grass and the sky. 

“It’s past time,” she said with a hard nod. There was little left to say on the matter other than that. His mother was gone. Even weeks later, and the Stella had knelt for him, a newly reborn god in that field. 

Even now the power was unsettling, he felt like he was young again. Uncontrolled and leaking light. There were nights where he had to walk out into the wilderness alone to glow bright, flashes of light in between trees.

Joe was always there for him when he came back, groggy but his arms open, and Nicky would crawl into bed, satisfied. 

They lived in Joe’s palace, Nicky could not find the strength in himself, despite all the power he now held, to go home just yet. He let the Stella take care of it, venture home if they pleased, and be free if not. 

They were grateful for it, the simple pleasure of choice. 

“We’ve found a rare thing, Nicolo,” Quynh said, staring at the bonfire. Joe was twirling Nile about in a dance. The quartet played a fast-paced jig on a few fiddles and flutes. As the sky grew darker the dancers became nothing more than silhouettes. Nile’s hair swung about her in black tendrils of braids when Joe dipped her. 

“Love?” Nicky asked.

“Security,” she said. “Certainty.”

“Nothing is ever certain,” he said.

“No, but they come close.”

Andromache approached them from where she’d been camped out by the barrels of ale, drinking Booker under the table to be tended to by a consoling Copley, the lone human among the gods. 

She wrapped herself around Quynh’s back and leaned in to nip at her neck. She looked up with her eyes at Nicky, the rest of her face hidden in Quynh’s shoulder.

“Trying to steal Quynh away from me, little Moon?” she teased.

“As if Quynh would allow such a thing,” he drawled to her. 

“If anyone’s doing the stealing it will be me!”

Nicky was picked up by strong, capable arms and twirled in the air, just as Nile had been moments ago. Those same arms brought him down into an embrace. Joe was covered in a light sheen of sweat that only made him more handsome, lively with the light of happiness and a new marriage. 

“Ah, but you already have, my love,” Nicky teased him, bringing him in for a kiss by the chin. 

Joe growled into it. “I’m about to do it again.” He tugged on Nicky’s arm, in the direction of the shadowed forest.

“Leaving the party so soon?” Quynh shouted after them.

“We’re going to have our own party!” Joe said, just loud enough to be heard over Nicky’s laughter.

He was not laughing for long. They ran into the shelter of the forest, hands gripped together tight in desperation. The sky was growing darker but Nicky made sure there was enough light for them to see by. The moon was shining and so was the sky, full of stars and long blue trails of light to guide their way. 

Joe pushed him against a tree, his hands warm supports against the side of Nicky’s neck. They kissed slow, teasing, every glide of tongue was like a drip of syrup into Nicky’s blood. He was drunk on the taste of Joe, hypnotized, and he knew it would be like this every time.

“I have something for you,” Joe whispered when they finally pulled away from each other’s mouths. He dragged his fingertips up and down Nicky’s cheek, a barely-there caress over the skin that glowed a gentle white.

“A gift?” Nicky asked.

“For us,” Joe said, kissing him quickly, happily. He reached into his suit jacket and fumbled around in his pocket, then pulled out a folded piece of paper. He brought it up for Nicky, and nodded his head in question.

Nicky smiled, but glowed a bit brighter. “You could always light a fire yourself, you know,” he said.

“But I like seeing you better,“ Joe said. 

Nicky was sure his smile was so wide he looked ridiculous, but it did not falter even as he opened up the paper, as Joe crept in close again hovering just over his shoulder looking down at the drawing with intent.

It was a house, a small cottage drawn in familiar detail. Made of weathered stone, perched on the edge of a bluff by the sea. There were a few trees in the front yard, dotted with small bundles of fruit. 

“What—what is this?” Nicky asked.

“You said you wanted to go away,” Joe whispered. He was looking at Nicky with such earnest, hope and remembrance swimming in those deep, dark eyes. “If we got through this, you said you wanted to get away.”

“Yusuf—” Nicky’s thumbs were pressed hard against the paper, he was wrinkling it, but he thought he might cry if he didn’t. 

“I asked Booker, who asked Copley, for a place. It’s far, the other side of the world. Somewhere neither of us have been. An island in the sea. A small city, but the cottage is half a day away. It’s human-made but Copley promised me it’s sturdy.” Joe was speaking fast, like he couldn’t get it all out fast enough. He paused, for a breath, then said, “We could go, and we don’t have to come back.”

Nick traced his fingers over the sketch of the roof, thatched in dark tiles. He imagined them a terracotta red, he thought about how they might look in the height of summer. 

“You would do that? Leave this?” Nicky asked, folding the paper back up to give Joe his full attention.

“If you wanted it,” Joe said. It was that simple. 

“If I wanted,” Nicky echoed to himself. “We can’t just leave, Yusuf.”

“Yes we can,” Joe said. He crowded Nicky against the tree again, and pushed their forehead together. “We rule the world, you and I. We can do as we please. Besides—” He rubbed his thumb over Nicky’s bottom lip, “Andromache and Quynh have already agreed to take care of things here.”

“They did?” Nicky asked.

“That is their gift to us,” Joe confirmed.

Nicky was quiet, he held back his response, and he could tell it made Joe nervous but he was grateful that his husband did not press. 

He was grateful for a great many things. The list was growing long, the list was full of love. 

“A year, maybe two,” Nicky said eventually. “But we will come back. I would like to, someday.”

That was all Joe needed to hear. He kissed Nicky hard, and again, then suddenly he was laughing. Joe was laughing. Nicky was too. 

With their whole hearts and stomachs, entangled with each other in the shadows of their forest. Their glee and love uncontained, they had an eternity together to spend this way, the colors of dawn at their fingertips, a million sunrises and sunsets, and a million moons more.

**Author's Note:**

> Come check me out on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/1derspark)!
> 
> And as always, comments and kudos are appreciated and feed the beast :)


End file.
